Page:SECOND ANNUAL REPORT 2001 – 2002.pdf/6

 require social assistance. Families living in isolated communities, often with disabled members, will be considered ineligible for assistance if they own a car. There is extremely limited public transportation in Kosovo and the very few doctors do not normally make house calls.

The situation of residents of Kosovo who are not of Albanian ethnicity remains very difficult. Many, in particular Serbs and Roma remain isolated in ghettos and face great danger should they venture out of those ghettos without armed international escorts. Their extremely restricted freedom of movement has serious repercussions on all aspects of normal life—access to employment, medical care, schools, and public services generally. The provision of public utilities (electricity, water, etc.) to these ghettos is at a much lower standard than to the rest of the population.

With respect to the return of those displaced in connection with the conflict, and in particular members of non-Albanian communities forced to leave Kosovo at its conclusion, the physical and economic security situation still renders sustained returns a distant goal. In the meantime, internally displaced persons in Serbia proper are living in dire conditions that are exacerbated by their uncertain legal status.

At the same time, the situation of members of minority communities inside and outside of Kosovo is a highly politicised issue. All sides envision these people as objects of political debate, rather than subjects of law, an approach that is incompatible with human rights. This politicised approach has led to the establishment of contradictory policies that obstruct not only the realisation of the political agenda but the capacity of the individuals affected to realise their rights. For example, UNMIK has decided that Serbs who bought urban residential property during the early 1990s may not necessarily be considered to be the legitimate owners, and that the properties may be given back to Albanians who had lived there previously. The process of determining who `owns' these properties is very long. Until the process is over, a displaced Serbian family will not have or know that they will ever have a place to live, should they return to Kosovo. Whereas this policy may meet certain political objectives, it creates insurmountable obstacles to Serbs wishing to return `to their homes' in Kosovo. As noted elsewhere, UNMIK may also restrict the right of Serbs whose property ownership is not in dispute from selling their property, thereby severely limiting the possibilities of those property owners from determining their best interests for the future.

In Kosovo, the international community has taken a long-term view of the resolution of property issues, in the interests of righting historical wrongs stemming back to 1989 as alluded to above. The administrative body established by UNMIK to resolve complex property problems (the Housing and Property Directorate, or HPD) has received several thousand applications requesting the return of residential property in Kosovo. However, to date, they have managed to effect relatively few returns. According to HPD's own calculations, if they continue at the current rate of resolving cases, it will take over six years to complete their case load. However, the cases that they have focused on thus far are easy cases, where both parties agree about the resolution, the property at issue is not occupied, and so forth. So even if a six year wait to return to one's home could be seen as reasonable, the figure is not based in the reality of the cases that remain to be resolved.