OSCE community teams support Kosovo's non-majority populations
Inadequate access to services, poor education in their own languages, and low representation in public life - these are just some of the challenges facing Kosovo's non-majority communities.
To promote mutual respect and reconciliation among all ethnic groups in Kosovo, the OSCE Mission in Kosovo set up a section focusing on communities in 2007. The following year it established regional teams to monitor and report on community rights at the central and local levels. Now in their third year of operation, the OSCE teams are having a tangible impact on people's lives.
Improving education
Last year, the Mission donated school books to Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian girls attending primary schools in Albanian and Serbian, to support their continued access to education, reduce high drop-out rates and respond to specific problems faced by female students from these communities.
More recently, in January, the Mission donated 2,500 new books in Bosnian, Turkish and Serbian to the Prizren inter-municipal library. This followed a previous donation of over 2,000 books in Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian to the same library in 2007.
"Travelling to Prizren to get books is not very easy for children living in rural areas," says Shehida Miftari, a community team member in Prizren. To ensure the books reach those who could benefit most, a mobile library, known as Infobus, developed as part of the project, travels to those living in remote rural areas.
"The availability of books through this mobile service will have an impact on the quality of education, as the new books belong to Kosovo curricula, in addition to the novels, classics, professional literature, art and music donated in 2007," Miftari says.
For Camilj Ajdini, principal of a primary school in Planjane/Pllanjanë, a village in Prizren with Kosovo Bosniak and Kosovo Serb communities, the visit of the mobile library is extremely important: "This is the first time after ten years that the students can actually read proper books as foreseen by Kosovo curricula."
Encouraging authorities to meet community needs
"Through the community teams deployed all over Kosovo, we monitor and report on the compliance of municipal authorities with international and domestic standards of community rights' protection," says the Mission's Senior Communities Protection Adviser, Monica Llamazares.
The Mission's monitoring reports are an important tool for raising awareness and ensuring that the relevant authorities work for the needs of all communities, explains Llamazares:
"As a result of our proactive monitoring and advising authorities on the importance of responding to the specific needs of communities, for example by ensuring that official documents are translated into community languages, or to ensure that non-majority communities are consulted about issues affecting their lives, municipalities are reminded of their obligation to uphold the rights of all of Kosovo's residents."
The Mission's first Communities Profiles report was published last year, which contained information on each of the Kosovo communities, as well as reports on education, returns, rights assessment and participation.
A second Community Rights Assessment (available through the link to the right) and an update to the Communities Profiles are planned for this year, which will inform the Mission's work with Kosovo's communities in 2010 and beyond.