Kosovo President Pledges to Uphold Minority Rights

Thaci pledged to address the concerns of minority communitie. Photo: President’s Office

President Hashim Thaci on Wednesday presented Kosovo as an “example” to be followed by other countries in the region when it comes to respecting the rights of ethnic minorities, while calling for dialogue in order to build a “home for all communities”.

But Thaci admitted that challenges lie ahead for Kosovo, following years of conflicts and interethnic tensions.

“Nobody could say that Kosovo is perfect and we don’t face challenges. Walls have separated us in the past and we have not destroyed them all. But is it important we have found the key to solving problems and dialogue is the key,” Thaci told a meeting of the Consultative Council for Communities, a body set up to establish a framework for the protection of rights of communities in Kosovo.

Kosovo’s constitution and laws provide extensive rights for the country’s minority communities, including reserved seats in the parliament.

However, implementation of the laws, according to Kosovo Serb parliamentarian Nenad Rasic is far from perfect.

“Many laws dealing with the rights of Kosovo Serb community have stalled and have not been implemented,” Rasic told BIRN.

According to him, the most important laws regulating the rights of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its heritage have not been implemented as yet.

The security of the Kosovo Serb community generally remains an issue – a legacy of the bitter war for independence fought in the late 1990s between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and the Serbian authorities.

A survey published recently by the Pristina-based think tank, the Kosovo Centre for Security Studies, KCSS, showed that only a minority of the remaining Serbs feel truly secure in the country, whose independence Serbia does not recognise.

In the survey, 28 per cent of Kosovo Serb respondents said they feel “mainly unsafe”, while 56 per cent feel only “somehow safe”. Only 16 per cent of respondents said that they feel “mainly safe”.

KCSS concluded that this sense of insecurity among Kosovo Serbs reflects a low level of trust felt by Serbs in Kosovo state institutions, including security institutions.

In Rasic’s opinion, the survey’s findings are quite reasonable.

“When we talk about safety, we don’t mean only physical safety. There are some minor incidents which, although isolated, affect the general perception of insecurity,” Rasic added referring to robberies that are sporadically reported in remote Serb-inhabited areas.

Tensions have risen in Kosovo lately over government plans to establish an autonomous Association of Serbian Municipalities in Kosovo including ten municipalities.

While the EU – and Serbia – support the plan, opposition parties in Kosovo call it a surrender to Serbian interests.

The exact size of the Kosovo Serb community is unclear but is roughly estimated at around 100,000, split evenly between the far north of Kosovo and several more scattered communities in the south.

Other ethnic minorities in the country include Turks, Roma, Bosniaks, Gorani and Croats.