Publisher: ECMI European Center for Minority Issues

Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998

Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998

Author(s): Stefan Troebst / Language(s): English

Keywords: Dayton Agreement; ethnic cleansing; UN and Kosovo; High Representative in Kosovo; European Union and Kosovo; 1999 NATO Intervention;

The editorial deadline for this documentation was 9 March 1998--the day the Contact Group on Bosnia-Herzegovina emerged as the main international forum to deal with the Kosovo problem in its »new” and much more pressing form. The term Kosovo refers to the administrative unit in the South-western corner of the Republic of Serbia within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) – a territory of 10,887 square kilometres called Kosova or Kosova dhe Rrafshi i Dukagjinit in Albanian and Kosovo or Kosovo-Metohija (abbreviated Kosmet) in Serbian. The author is indebted to colleagues in three institutions and networks dealing with the Kosovo conflict he has been or is part of: (1) The »International Commission on the Balkans,” founded in 1995 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Aspen Institute Berlin; (2) a group of contributors to a »Kosovo Policy Study” in the framework of the Conflict Prevention Network of Directorate General 1A of the European Commission at Brussels set up in 1997; and (3), a group of intellectuals from Prishtina and Belgrade as well as external experts brought together for the first time in 1996 by the Bertelsmann Science Foundation and the Research Group on European Affairs at the Centre for Applied Politics of the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. Farimah Daftary, Kinga Gál, Priit Järve, and William McKinney of ECMI have been supportive—and creative--in searching for documents and materials

The Albanian Aromanians´ Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania

The Albanian Aromanians´ Awakening: Identity Politics and Conflicts in Post-Communist Albania

Author(s): Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers / Language(s): English

Keywords: Aromanian; Vlach;

Today, many thousands of Aromanians (also known as „Vlachs“) live quite compactly in Northern Greece, Macedonia (FYROM) and southern Albania; and there are still traces of Vlach-Aromanian and Aromanian populations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. In Albania, they were recently estimated at about 200,000 by the English scholar Tom Winnifrith. In Albanian communist times, Aromanians were not recognised as a separate minority group, officially considered to be almost completely assimilated. However, in the early post-communist transition period, a vivid Aromanian ethnic movement emerged in Albania and it became part of a recent global Balkan Aromanian initiative. The Albanian Aromanians’ new emphasis of their ethnicity can be seen as a pragmatic strategy of adjustment to successes and failures in the Albanian political transition and to globalisation. It is exactly the re-vitalisation of the conflict between followers of a pro-Greek and a pro-Romanian Aromanian identification that serves to broaden the scope of options for potential exploitation.

Bilateral Agreements in Central and Eastern Europe: A New Inter-State Framework for Minority Protection?

Bilateral Agreements in Central and Eastern Europe: A New Inter-State Framework for Minority Protection?

Author(s): Kinga Gál / Language(s): English

The practice of bilateral agreements on good neighbourly relations was ‘reinvented’ by Germany after 1991 to guarantee the frontiers resulting from World War II and to protect the minorities of German origin in Central and Eastern Europe. A similar policy was pursued by Hungary with five of ist neighbours to deal with the problems of the Hungarian minorities. Parallel to this trend, the European Union has also promoted a policy aimed at guaranteeing stability in Central and Eastern Europe through bilateral agreements on good neighbourliness. The bilateral treaties follow each other in time, structure and content. They incorporate soft law provisions, especially with regard to their minority regulations, reflecting the strong influence of the political factor. They do not mention collective rights and fail to provide the national minorities concerned with any form of self-government. Furthermore, they were often negotiated in the absence of the minority communities they were designed to protect. As these treaties are politically highly motivated, the political aspects of the implementation mechanisms have received primacy over the legal possibilities. The treaties, and hence indirectly the provisions of international documents enshrined in them, have the same status as national legislation and could therefore be claimed before national courts. However, the joint intergovernmental committees monitoring implementation have the potential to become the most effective implementation mechanism. In conclusion, although these treaties have not significantly changed the existing practice of minority protection so far, their importance should not be diminished because they contribute to the construction of a new inter-state framework for minority protection.