Diego Garcia: UK uses ruse to block right of return
Between 1967 and 1973 Britain forcibly removed the entire population of the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean to make way for the construction of a US military base on the largest atoll, Diego Garcia. The British Government has resorted to a little-used colonial power to overturn without debate a court judgement which had granted the Chagossian islanders the right to return to some of the islands. The UK claims that post 9/11 security considerations give priority to the alleged need for the islands to be used exclusively by US forces.
In a recent report the Minority Rights Group argues that the UK's extraordinary attempt to circumvent the law by overturning a high court decision creates an extremely dangerous precedent.
See the report at www.minorityrights.org/news_detail.asp?ID=277. The website of the displaced Chagossians is www.chagos.org
UN fiddles while Kosovan Serbs and Roma suffer
Five years after the conflict in Kosovo fewer than 10,000 of the 225,000 people forcibly removed from the region have returned home. This is in stark contrast to the high rates of return in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, Norway's NATO ambassador Kai Eide criticises the UN for failing to offer adequate protection to the Serb and Roma minorities in the province. Human Rights Watch has rebuked the NATO-led KFOR force, the UN police and the locally recruited Kosovo Police Service for standing by in March as thousands of ethnic Albanians rioted, caused the deaths of more than 20 people, injured 900 and forced more than 3,000 to flee their homes.
The UN, with a creditable record in peacekeeping, has proved hopelessly inadequate at governing a complex society like Kosovo. According to Poul Svane, the Norwegian Refugee Council's resident representative in Kosovo, since the riots the UN has been incapable of action. Meetings on development of the province are characterised by lack of coordination and determination while the Albanian and Serbian leaders fight over influence and refuse cooperation.
After 1999 the reconstruction boom - fuelled by the arrival of donors and NGOs - conferred an air of prosperity. Since this cash injection dried up the economy has steadily contracted just as Kosovan refugees have been repatriated by their former host countries in Europe. As tens of thousands of school leavers enter the non-existent labour market every year, unemployment has reached 65%. The UN operation has stagnated and been unable to devolve political power. Little progress has been made on the difficult question of final status. The Albanians still seek outright independence while the Serbian government in Belgrade is prepared only to concede limited autonomy for Albanians. Instead of acting as a mediator, the international community is sitting on the sidelines.
Many Albanian refugees have invested in land in the province but will not return unless the economic situation improves. Return prospects for most Serbian refugees remain dismal. Difficulties with regaining abandoned and seized property, ethnically motivated violence and an unstable security situation prevent a larger return of refugees and internally displaced Serbs to the province.
Kofi Annan has appointed the Danish civil servant Soren Jessen-Petersen as his new representative in Kosovo. If he fails to facilitate the return of Serbs then Kosovo will continue its perilous drift towards partition, a process with the gravest implications for the stability of south Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The political implications of failure in Kosovo are grave. If a united international community is unable to improve matters in a relatively benign environment, what chances of a divided international community succeeding in more hostile places like Iraq?
For more information about the international community's role in Kosovo, visit the websites of NATO's Kosovo Force (www.nato.int/kfor), the UN Mission in Kosovo (www.unmikonline.org), the UN Development Programme (www.kosovo.undp.org) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (www.osce.org/kosovo). Their work is critiqued at: www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/02759.450161.00.html and www.icg.org/home/index.cfm?id=2627&1=1
Expanded European Union failing to offer protection
At the Tampere Summit in 1999 EU leaders pledged that harmonisation of asylum and immigration laws would bring better protection for persons fleeing persecution. However, a report from the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) argues that fraught subsequent difficult have been driven not by the tolerant spirit of Tampere but the desire of most European governments to keep the number of asylum seekers arriving as low as possible and by their concerns to tackle perceived abuses of their asylum systems. Countries have showed little sense of solidarity and pursued narrow national agendas at great cost to refugees and to the building of a fair and efficient European protection system. Instead of sharing responsibility between EU countries a disproportionate responsibility is falling on those EU members with southern and eastern EU external borders.
ECRE's report. Broken Promises, Forgotten Principles, is at: www.ecre.org/positions/Tampere_June04.pdf.
FMR 23, due for publication in April 2005, will examine a range of asylum issues. For further information, see: www.fmreview.org/forthcoming.htm