Serbia and Montenegro


Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community


Kosovo


Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights
The Role of the International Community

Kosovo

Kosovo remained a de facto international protectorate during 2000, administered by UNMIK, with security provided by NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers and United Nations police and financed primarily by the European Union and United States governments and the World Bank. Yugoslavia had little influence on events in the province outside the Serb-dominated municipalities north of Mitrovica. The international community's policies toward Kosovo pulled in contradictory directions: expected municipal elections aimed to increase local self-government for Kosovo's population, while in the area of the courts and media, international involvement increased. Despite an ongoing security gap for minorities, political violence, and growing crime, with elements of former KLA and Kosovo Protection Corps clearly implicated, NATO and the U.N. remained unable or unwilling to confront the perpetrators in a decisive and consistent manner.

United Nations

UNMIK made some progress in establishing transitional power structures and persuading most leading Albanian politicians and some moderate Serb leaders to participate in them. Its international civilian police, tasked both with policing the province and establishing a local Kosovo Police Service, remained under-equipped and often poorly trained and faced difficulties obtaining cooperation from local communities, judges, and prosecutors, and in some cases KFOR, with most cases left unsolved or dropped before reaching the courts. A case involving a Kenyan aid worker wrongly accused of fraud highlighted concerns about due process violations by U.N. police. The establishment in August of a special U.N. police unit for the protection of Serbs was a more positive development. Evidence of bias and intimidation in the nascent local court system, and a lack of serving judges from minorities led UNMIK to acknowledge that, as with the police, a greater degree of initial international supervision would be necessary. Following the model of Mitrovica, UNMIK appointed international judges to some courts and transferred some sensitive cases involving minority or political violence to those courts. On August 14, the Polish human rights lawyer appointed by the special representative of the secretary-general in July as Kosovo's first ombudsman made his first working visit to the province. The ongoing detention of some 1,200 Kosovo Albanians in Serbia, as well as the lack of information about the fate of some 3,300 missing persons from Kosovo, including 400 Serbs and one hundred Roma, was highlighted by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson's appointment, on September 1, of a special envoy on persons deprived of liberty. In an April resolution, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights emphasized the need for an independent judiciary and an end to inter-ethnic violence in Kosovo. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia continued its investigations in Kosovo into crimes committed by government forces and the KLA.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

Charged with institution building, the OSCE Mission in Kosovo performed well in the area of human rights training and monitoring, producing accurate and public periodic reports with UNHCR on the difficulties faced by Kosovo's minorities. Its lead role in organizing municipal elections was less positive, with lessons from Bosnia regarding the need for basic conditions for free and fair elections and enforcement of standards seemingly ignored. The OSCE's efforts to tackle hate speech also drew criticism from press freedom groups and Kosovo Abanian journalists.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The NATO-led KFOR remained the most important security actor in Kosovo. Despite some improvements, including a more mobile approach to protecting minorities pioneered by the British contingent, a reduction in the murder rate, more aggressive pursuit of illegal weapons, and an acknowledgment that attacks on minorities were organized, KFOR remained reluctant to confront the armed elements responsible for many of the attacks. An uneven response to violence among KFOR's various national contingents, an inadequate response to attacks on Roma, and complaints about cooperation with U.N. police also cast a shadow on KFOR's record.

Council of Europe

The Council of Europe and particularly its Congress of Local and Regional Authorities continued its support for democratic institution building and human rights in Kosovo through the council's office in Pristina. In July, the newly established council observation mission began monitoring preparations for the municipal elections scheduled for October 28.

European Union

European Union governments generally showed a reluctance to move beyond the condemnation of violence against minorities and toward tackling its causes. While showing more equivocation on early municipal elections than the U.N. or U.S., leading E.U. states were nonetheless unwilling to call publicly for postponement. The European Union continued to finance much of the international effort in Kosovo, although there were renewed criticisms of delays in the disbursement of promised aid by the European Commission.

United States

The United States was willing to condemn violence against minorities and even in June to acknowledge that such violence was systematic, but despite organizing a June conference of Albanian and Serb leaders outside Washington, it showed far less willingness to expend the political capital or deploy its troops in KFOR in the manner necessary actually to improve security in the province. The laissez-faire approach of U.S. policy to Kosovo was most clearly manifest in its strong support for early elections in the province, its unwillingness to acknowledge publicly the involvement of KLA members in ethnic and political violence, and in the trial of the Momcilovic brothers, where the U.S. army withheld evidence that an Albanian man involved in an attack on the Momcilovic home had in fact been shot by U.S. troops and not by the Serb defendants, who spent a year in pretrial detention.

Relevant Human Rights Watch

Reports:

Kosovo: Rape As A Weapon of "Ethnic Cleansing," 3/00