Keywords: Images of the Balkans; Ethnic Conflict;
TABLE OF CONTENTS // Preface // Note on Terminology // Introductory Remarks // Problems of Regional Identity: Images of the Balkans // Managing Ethnic Conflict // Regional Aspirations and Cooperation // Roles of the EU and the International Community // Conclusions // List of Participants
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Keywords: Roma in Romanian School System; minority language;
TABLE OF CONTENTSPreface // The Background // National Minorities in Romania: The Constitutional Framework // Undermining Constitutional Guarantees Through Legislation // The 1995 Education Law (NO. 84/1995) // The Education Decree of 1997 // Summary of the Discussion on the Use of Minority Languages // in Education in Romania // University Education in the Hungarian Language // List of Participants
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Keywords: Interethnic Relations;
TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Introduction Recent Regional Developments The Consequences of The Madrid Summit Effects of the Problems in the Balkans A Romanian Model of Inclusion Reconstructing Bicultural and Multicultural Values Interethnic Relations in Slovakia The U.S. Role in the New Europe Ukraine and Moldova Conclusions List of Participants
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Keywords: Russia and Baltic Republics; russophone communities;
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Keywords: Political Participation of Roma; Roma in Hungary; Roma in Slovakia;
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Keywords: Kosovo-conflict; NATO Intervention;
The meeting that is the subject of this report took place on May 22, 1999, in Rome, at the height of the expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians by Serb forces and the air war conducted by the NATO alliance. The atmosphere was one of suspense, alarm, and determination. Would the Yugoslav political and military leadership ultimately surrender to NATO’s bombing, or would the consensus among NATO members unravel—some had already proposed a bombing halt— because of Yugoslav resistance and Western revulsion over casualties among Serb civilians? Would the bombing stop or accelerate the expulsions in Kosovo? Was a land war inevitable? How much more damage would a continuation of the war do to relations between NATO members and Russia? What would be the fate of Yugoslavia’s neighbors? And of Serbia and Kosovo? What would be the state of interethnic relations in the region at war’s end?
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Keywords: Montenegro independance;
Montenegro is a small republic—with a population of 635,000—which, together with Serbia, makes up today’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is at a crucial moment: the present government leadership is considering how to re-define its fundamental relationship with Serbia. On December 3-4, 1999 the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) organized a meeting in Budva, on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast, about the status of Montenegro in Yugoslavia. Some 40 leading officials and policymakers from Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, the United States, Italy, the OSCE and the United Nations, as well as from the Serbian democratic opposition, participated. They addressed Montenegro’s relationship with Serbia, its role in the western Balkans, and how Montenegro is managing interethnic relations, especially with its Albanian minority. The tenor was one of cautious candor, with an emphasis on positive accomplishments. Indeed, the uncertainty and lack of unanimity that characterized reactions to political developments in Montenegro reflected the open nature of the dialogue.
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Keywords: Romanian Anti-Hungarianism; Roma in Romania;
Despite the difficulties that have beset Romania in its transition from communism to democracy, it boasts a most important success in interethnic relations. Few would have predicted, after the disastrous violence between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians in Tirgu Mures in 1990, that only six years later the ethnic Hungarian party would be a respected member of Romania’s governing coalition.The Project on Ethnic Relations was an active participant in bringing about this result, initiating the first discussions and negotiations between leaders of the preceding government and the Hungarian minority, and replacing confrontation with a pattern of dialogue that persists to this day. The achievement, however, is untested by time. With the year 2000 elections underway in Romania, ethnic issues are already being raised in the campaign.
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Keywords: Serbs and Hungarians in Vojvodina; status of Vojvodina;
This preface to the account of discussions between the Serbian democratic opposition and leaders of the Vojvodina ethnic communities about the future of Vojvodina is being written in June 2000. We do not know how much longer the Milosevic regime will remain in power, but sooner or later it will collapse. Its most deplorable legacy will be the deliberate and systematic destruction of the fragile interethnic accommodation that had once characterized the region. Much of the resulting suffering and damage is beyond repair any time in the near future: It is difficult even to conceive of normal relations between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians before another lifetime goes by.Nevertheless, Serbia remains a multiethnic country. If the Serbian democratic opposition is to succeed, it needs to work with the minorities. It needs their support and their votes now, and it needs to come to power prepared with a fair and effective minorities policy. The minorities, in turn, need a democratic future.
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Keywords: Romani Minority in Hungary;
Hungary has launched one of Europe’s most comprehensive efforts to address the needs of its ethnic minorities, including unique provisions for self-government. This policy is motivated by the wish to set an example for neighboring countries with large Hungarian minorities, as well as by the need to satisfy the demands of Hungary’s own minorities. One puzzle that remains unresolved is how to assure ethnically based parliamentary representation at the national level. Except for the large Romani minority, all of Hungary’s twelve other recognized minorities are very small and some are geographically dispersed. (The Greek minority, for example, numbers fewer than 1,000.) Another factor is that Hungary’s 386-member parliament is unicameral, so that the addition of even one mandatory place for each of the thirteen recognized minorities could have unpredictable effects on the balance of power in governments that typically are made up of coalitions. There is also the question of how to balance the expectations of a large minority, the Roma, with those of the small minorities.
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Keywords: Preševo; Bujanovac; Albanians in Macedonia; Albanians in Montenegro; Kosovo-conflict;
The discussions summarized in this report took place on December 1 and 2, 2000, in the Vougliameni suburb of Athens, Greece, at a gathering of senior political leaders from Southeast Europe. The Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) convened the meeting, in an informal and neutral setting, to help these leaders in their mutual search for solutions to the bitter aftermath of ethnic strife and warfare that devastated parts of their region during the 1990s, and to encourage them to exchange ideas about how to prevent continuing interethnic rivalries from breaking out in renewed violence. Behind the prosaic title of the Athens discussions —“Albanians as Majorities and Minorities: A Regional Dialogue”— lie some of the most explosive issues of the day: the future of the status of Kosovo; relations between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians in Kosovo and between Serbs and Albanians in Serbia proper; the survival of the Yugoslav Federation, the territorial integrity of Serbia and Macedonia; and the ebb and flow of influence between Albania and Albanians living outside its borders. The outcomes of these questions will affect the entire region, including even Greece and Italy and, indeed, the international community itself, for decades to come.
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Keywords: Yugoslavia 2001; Slobodan Milošević; future of Montenegro; Miodrag Vuković; Dragoljub Micunović;
On December 14-15, 2001, senior Yugoslav, Serbian and Montenegrin politicians, as well as Serb leaders from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, met with political leaders and high-level officials from Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania and the United States. Senior officials from the European Union (EU), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations (UN) also took part. The meeting, entitled “The New Yugoslavia and Its Neighbors: A Regional Dialogue,” was held in Belgrade and marked the start of a new Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) initiative, called “Serbs and Their Neighbors.” This new PER series complements another, started in April 2000, called “Albanians and Their Neighbors.”Their goal is to sustain a serious regional discussion about the two most pressing ethno-political issues in Europe today.The meeting was held one year after the democratic change took place in Belgrade. The destructive regime of Slobodan Milosevic was toppled, beginning a new era not only for Yugoslavia but for the entire region. Yugoslav democratic forces had endured a decade of grave conditions and are now trying to lead the country back into the European family.
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Keywords: Pomaks; Roma in Bulgaria; Turks in Bulgaria;
This is a report of two discussions that took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, on June 29-30 and December 18, 2001, respectively, between Bulgarian government and party leaders and the leaders of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), Bulgaria’s predominantly ethnic Turkish party. Bulgaria is home to one of the most unusual interethnic arrangements in Southeastern Europe. The leadership of the large (almost 10 per cent of the population) Turkish minority, which might be expected by some to be militant in pressing for special status and protections along ethnic lines, has instead announced its intention to pursue a civic model as the basis for its efforts to improve the conditions in which that country’s Turks and Pomaks (Bulgarian-speaking Muslims) live. To Americans and others accustomed to the notion of a social order that treats its members as individual citizens first and only then as members of ethnic groups, this will sound quite familiar. But in the complex ethnic worlds of this region, it is a unique exception that merits special attention. For example, Hungarians living outside Hungary, who make up Central Europe’s largest minority, conduct highly organized political campaigns in Romania, Slovakia and Serbia, with the aim of maintaining and strengthening Hungarian cultural identity. And the Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia, and south Serbia have gone to war with their neighbors over the issue of their rights and status.
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Keywords: Albanian regional integration; Western Balkans; multiethnic Kosovo;
On April 7 and 8, 2000, senior Albanian politicians from Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro met with leaders of the democratic opposition in Serbia and leaders of the Kosovar Serb community; other political leaders from Macedonia and Montenegro; and representatives from Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, the United States, the Council of Europe, the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, the OSCE, the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations. This unprecedented meeting, which was held in Budapest, Hungary, marked the start of a major initiative by the Project on Ethnic Relations on “Albanians and Their Neighbors.” It is aimed at maintaining a region-wide, high-level dialogue on the most explosive ethnic-political issue in Europe today. This report captures and records the main theme of this opening discussion: the conflicting hopes and fears of diverse ethnic communities during a period of rapid and often violent change in the Balkans. Three issues dominated the meeting: the current and future status of Kosovo and its impact on the politics of the region; interethnic arrangements in Montenegro and Macedonia and the relations of Albanians with the majority populations in those republics; and whether Albanian leaders in the region aspire to the creation of a “Greater Albania.”
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Keywords: Albania as part of Western Balkanas;
The interest of the Project of Ethnic Relations (PER) in the issue of Albanians and their neighbors goes back many years. In 1992, PER convened its first seminar for leading Albanian intellectuals from the region, to learn about their views on the interethnic situation in the Balkans. It was one of several consultations PER held with major ethnic communities in the Balkans at that time. In 1995, at a PER roundtable in Belgrade, PER brought together vice presidents of the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Democratic League of Kosovo, thus breaking a four-year self-imposed boycott by Kosovar Albanians on contacts with Belgrade. In 1997, PER brought Kosovo Albanian leaders and Belgrade officials to a landmark meeting in New York City, where they worked out a platform for future negotiations, but this process was interrupted when armed clashes broke out in 1998. After the 1999 Kosovo war, PER renewed its efforts in the form of a series of regional discussions for senior politicians from the Balkans under the heading “Albanians and Their Neighbors.” The first roundtable was organized in April 2000 in Budapest, with the assistance of the Government of Hungary. The second meeting took place in Athens in December of that year with support from the Greek Government. The third roundtable, which is the subject of this report, took place in Lucerne in November 2003, with the support and cooperation of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
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Keywords: Mahala; Roma in Southeastern Europe; urban settlements of Roma;
Large Romani “mahalas” (neighborhoods) have existed in Central and Southeastern Europe for centuries. In the post-Communist transition, these neighborhoods experienced uncontrolled growth due to the immigration of a rapidly growing and newly impoverished Romani population. They now resemble typical urban ghettos: overpopulated pockets of poverty and unemployment, dependent on welfare and unable to pay the rising costs for necessary public services. An outbreak of ethnic violence in the Romani mahala of Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 2002 provided a fitting background for the Skopje meeting. Indeed, PER organizers were concerned at the time that the preconditions for similar outbreaks were then existent in a number of Romani mahalas throughout Southeastern Europe. Were preventive steps not undertaken, they cautioned, similar violence could be expected. Regrettably, such concerns turned out to be well-founded as rioting was later reported in a Romani mahala in Vidin, Bulgaria in March 2003. The report was written by Ilia Iliev of PER Sofia and by Andrzej Mirga, Chair of the PER Romani Advisory Council (PERRAC) and Chair of the Specialist Group on Roma/Gypsies of the Council of Europe. The report was edited by PER. The participants in the meeting have not had a chance to review the text, for which PER assumes full responsibility.
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Keywords: Ethnic conflict in Macedonia; 2001 agreement; macedonia;
The idea of hosting a meeting among members of the Macedonian governing coalition (the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia [SDSM], the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the opposition and representatives of the international community just six months after the formation of the new government, originated in Lucerne, Switzerland. There, during the third in a series of regional dialogues devoted to the issue of “Albanians and Their Neighbors,” representatives of Macedonia’s new coalition government asked the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) to hold this meeting. Intended in part as an evaluation of the coalition’s progress and as a vehicle for honest and open communication among all parliamentary parties, the meeting could perhaps not have come at a more interesting time in recent Macedonian politics. Just weeks before the meeting – made possible by the generous support and cooperation of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Embassy in Macedonia—former Prime Minister and leader of the largest ethnic Macedonian opposition party, Ljubco Georgievski publicly disavowed the Ohrid Framework Agreement—an internationally brokered truce that in 2001 helped to bring peace to a country on the brink of civil war. (Georgievski was a signatory to the Framework Agreement.) Days later, Arben Xhaferi, leader of the largest Albanian opposition party, threatened to resign, issuing a moratorium on behalf of his party. Also a signatory to the agreement, Xhaferi said his party was taking a “time-out” in opposition to the government’s failure to adequately implement the agreement.
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Keywords: Mavrovo process; ethnic conflict in Macedonia;
When, at the request of members of the Macedonian government, the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) agreed more than a year ago to host a roundtable meeting for representatives of the country’s coalition [the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)] and opposition parties, we scarcely anticipated the demand for this type of forum. Indeed, what started as a single meeting (held in Mavrovo, Macedonia on May 10-11, 2003) has since become the “Mavrovo Process.” Launched by PER in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss Embassy in Macedonia, the Process is designed to facilitate communication not only between members of the government and the opposition, but also within the coalition itself. These discussions, which are not for public attribution, provide participants a rare opportunity to offer their vision for Macedonia’s future and to candidly assess the government’s performance in implementing the 2001 Ohrid Framework Agreement—an internationally brokered truce that is credited with ending the country’s bloody albeit brief ethnic conflict. The participants at the May roundtable agreed that all parties should reconvene under PER auspices roughly once every six months, whereas members of the coalition should meet every three months. Two meetings have since taken place. The first, a discussion among the coalition parties, occurred in September; the second meeting, held in December, featured participants from the senior-most levels of the Macedonian government and opposition as well as representatives of the international community. While themes from the September discussion are referenced herein, it is the latter meeting which forms the basis for this report.
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Keywords: Women Policy Makers; Women and Interethnic Conflict ;
PER has been mediating interethnic disputes in the Balkans for over a decade, working closely with political leaders. The number of women occupying senior elective positions, although still disproportionately small (except in Kosovo where a quota is mandated by the international community), is nevertheless significant and growing. Against considerable odds, a group of exceptional women politicians, many of them young, has emerged—holding forth a promise of fresh approaches within this political neighborhood. Most are well-educated and have enjoyed significant international exposure. But they face exceptional challenges. Despite the lip service to women’s equality, political activities and public decision-making remain male-dominated arenas. PER does not subscribe to the cliché that women have a larger stake than men in avoiding violent conflict. Indeed, it would be naïve to suggest that women politicians automatically bring moderation to interethnic issues. Rather, the promise of women politicians lies elsewhere: their very participation introduces a new dimension—gender—to the list of variables that the political system must take into account in reckoning with constituencies.
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Keywords: Albania; Western Balkans; interethnic relations;
Relations between Albanians and their neighbors dominate politics in the Balkans and pose a continuing problem for European and Euro- Atlantic stability. More than a decade after the wars in ex-Yugoslavia first erupted, the so-called “Albanian Question” remains unresolved, with interethnic struggles in Kosovo, South Serbia, and Macedonia. The series on Albanians and Their Neighbors, launched by the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) in 2000, is a unique regional undertaking that brings together almost every significant ethnic Albanian political actor from the Balkans with non-Albanian counterparts from Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, and the international community. This is a report of the fourth gathering, which took place in Lucerne, Switzerland in May 2004. (Three earlier meetings took place in Budapest and in Athens in 2000, and in Lucerne in 2002.) These PER meetings provide the venue where many of the most critical high-level discussions and negotiations take place between Albanians and their neighbors—as well as with key players from the international community. Since 2000, PER has also convened regular follow-up roundtables in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro, with the aim of promoting practical measures toward interethnic accord. (Reports on these PER efforts are available at www.per-usa.org.) The May 2004 roundtable was noteworthy for the participants’ newly constructive approach to the question of Kosovo and positive reports on interethnic accommodation in Macedonia and Montenegro. The roundtable also made possible an additional PER effort: a face-to-face meeting in Pristina the following month between Kosovo Albanian and Serb political leaders, their first since the violence in Kosovo in March 2004.
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