Like the name of our blog, we crossed the bridge this week and started our visits to organisations located in Mitrovica. In the morning, we virtually visited the regional centre of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). This is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization consisting of 57 participating states from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. The mission in Kosovo is their second-largest field operation and covers the areas of human rights and community rights, democratization, and security and public safety. The OSCE mandate, which gives it a “leading role in matters relating to institution- and democracy-building and human rights,” is outlined in the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and an OSCE Permanent Council Decision.
We were lucky enough to meet five staff members, all focusing on different aspects of the OSCE’s work in Kosovo. In our conversation, two things stood out to me. First, I found their approach to monitoring very interesting. It surprised me that coffee has great importance in their monitoring processes, according to Ms Lehner. Their monitoring exists of visiting municipalities, having phone calls, grabbing coffee with locals, and then engaging in conversations. "Grabbing a coffee" thus has a deeper symbolic meaning, I learned. It represents a form of open discourse in which people can engage and share ideas without prejudice. Following these meaningful conversations, reports are created and published. Second, the OSCE plays a huge role in monitoring court hearings. To this day, there is still no in-person monitoring at court hearings due to the pandemic. To check the status of court cases, judges and prosecutors are contacted to provide them with the documents needed for the monitoring. During the lockdown in Kosovo, however, no court work was being performed at all.
In the afternoon, we had the honour to meet Mr Pentony from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the deputy head (and head) of the UNMIK Mitrovica regional office for six years. He explained to us that UNMIK is unique in its nature, as it is based on an open-ended mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and a P5 agreement on the mission. UNMIK focuses on trust-building within Kosovo by concentrating on the local or municipal level. Furthermore, Mr Pentony highlighted the importance of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), also justified under the Resolution 1244 framework, as it provides security and safety.
Finally, I would like to share something I noticed from these and previous meetings: the sensitive nature of language in post-conflict situations. Some examples are actors referring to trust-building rather than reconciliation, non-majority groups rather than minority groups, and the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue rather than the Serbia/Kosovo dialogue. There does seem to be a difference in who chooses to use which words. Especially actors that want to retain a neutral position tend to choose for the former word mentioned in the examples. These examples make clear yet again the sensitivity of language in peacebuilding and peacekeeping.
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