OSCE Mission helps promote regularization strategy for informal settlements

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning (MESP) and UN-Habitat will conclude a series of five regional roundtables on a Strategy and Action Plan for the Prevention and Regularization of Informal Settlements 2011 - 2015, on 20 May 2011, in Prishtinë/Priština.

The roundtables have provided MESP with an opportunity to explain the content of the strategy to municipal officials and to promote the principles of regularization of informal settlements. Comments and suggestions on the strategy and the action plan, by those who will eventually implement them, will be incorporated into the final documents.

Regularization aims, among other issues, to ensure that informal settlements are provided with basic services, and provides a process to solve issues relating to property rights.

Roundtables have been held in Pejë/Peč, Gjilan/Gnjilane, Prizren and Mitrovicë/Mitrovica regions and were attended by municipal officials from urban planning, property, land registry and social services departments, as well as by representatives from municipal offices for communities and refugee returns.

Discussions have so far indicated that there is a need to improve co-operation both between the MESP and municipalities as well as between municipalities themselves, in order to establish regularization working groups in all informal settlements, and increase public-private partnership.