North and south

By Finn van der Baan

Monday 20 June 2022*

The first thing we did on this day was meet with the New Social Intiative located in north Mitrovica. They focused on creating dialogue between Albanians and Serbians in order to create peace. After our meeting with them we walked around the city and went to look at the bridge that split the city into north and south. We then met with the International Business School of Mitrovica. 

 

The International Business School of Mitrovica is one of the only higher education institutions which prides itself on having students from multiple ethnic groups. In the city of Prishtina Serbians and Albanians rarely study together, but IBCM prides itself on having a space where Serbian, Albanian, and other minority groups can all interact and study together. The city of Mitrovica is split in the middle by a bridge, in the north of the city the population is Serbian whereas the south is Albanian. This is also why Mitrovica is a good place for an institution like this. Instead of keeping to this narrative that the city is split, they created a space where the ethnic groups come together.

 

Our meeting with IBCM was very interesting and nice to listen to and reminded me of AUC a little. All of their education was in English, this was due to them seeing themselves as an international school. One of their main goals was emulating a western European university. I think that this was probably one of the reasons why they decided to have their education be in the English language. I felt that the English language also served as some type of barrier for a lot of the young Kosovars. English isn’t as widely spoken among the youth as it is in western Europe. Therefore they only attract a certain type of student who have had the opportunity to learn English. However, I also do see the positive aspects of doing it in English as it allows everyone to come together and speak a common language that isn’t anyone’s first language. The price of attending this institution was much higher than attending a public university which can also have an effect on who could apply to be a student there. 

 

When talking to the students on how they experienced studying in a multi ethnic environment, they said they all very much enjoyed it. There isn’t much tension between the different ethnic groups who study at this university, but that makes sense because people who do discriminate would not apply to go here. When we asked the students who they were very close friends with, it was usually the case that they were the closest with people of the same ethnicity. This is not to say that the different ethnic groups aren’t friends, but the closest friends are usually of the same ethnic background. I think that it will take time in order to normalize being best friends with someone from a different ethnic group, but they are making a great start.

 

*Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

Coming together

By Sara Jelijs

 

Saturday 18 June 2022*

 

13.30 at Newborn. That means we could all sleep in a bit. This was not an unnecessary gift, as the entire group had gone clubbing the night before, wanting a taste of the nightlife Prishtina had to offer. And how we got that taste. Friday had been a day of meetings, first with EULEX, then with the Women’s Network. Both were very interesting, yet a combination of getting a lot of information and lacking sleep had started to kick in. All of us just wanted, needed, to dance.

It was the middle of the night, and a line of taxis came to pick us up in front of our hostel. We were not done with the day, yet. Our destination was ‘Zone’, a club on the outskirts of Prishtina. When we got out of the taxis, the place first seemed deserted. How could this have been the place we heard such good stories about? Entering the club was free of charge for all the girls, which meant getting in was free for almost all of us. This didn’t raise any eyebrows at first, but it maybe should have. We entered the club, it was dark and we followed the beat of the bass to find our way. We entered the main hall, with Albanian pop songs blasting through the speakers. It was dark, but we could still quite properly see the looks we attracted. We could also see the club was full. Of. Men.

 

Sure, attention is fun, and we got tons of it. All of us wore cute tops to dance in, and all of us were in an energetic, bubbly mood. However, not all the attention we got was as pleasant. Some of us experienced intimidating behavior from some of the other club goers through sexism and racism. We were sad and shaken by this, and it did leave its mark on the night. We were ready to go back to the hostel. Once back, most of us sat down in the living room to talk about the night.

 

13.30 at Newborn. We slept in and got on our way. Today had quite contrasting clothing instructions from the day before. We were to visit a Serb Orthodox Church in the Municipality of Gračanica. We had been told in class the week before that in this exact same church, a Peace Lab student had been hit with a stick by a nun for wearing shorts inside the church. We had been warned, and the message was received. All of us showed up in decent clothing to visit this special site. We stepped on the bus, entered the highway and left Prishtina behind for the day. On our way to the church, we stopped at the memorial sign for all Serbians that went missing in the Kosovo War. In letters the same size and font as ‘Newborn’, the monument said ‘Missing’. On the letters, pictures were displayed of those who haven’t been seen by their loved ones since the war. The memorial silenced us, showed that war causes pain and grief on all sides involved. Interestingly so, right next to the monument children were playing in a quite newly constructed playground. Children playing close to such a site signifies hope, a common future.

 

We continued our bus trip to the church. As soon as we reached the site, we saw that a wedding was going on. All guests were dressed beautifully and were a sight for sore eyes. We decided to come back later and to drive a bit further to a Roman quarry a bit further away. There, we walked around calmly, chatted, did some cartwheels and sang songs. The scenery was a bliss, and made all of us consider moving to Kosovo.

 

We went back to the church, a UNESCO-protected site, where we got to enjoy the sight of beautiful frescoes. The sun nicely lit up the the church and the grass and trees surrounding it. The breeze, the sun, the special site, the silence and the frescoes inside the church; all contributed to a calm and peaceful atmosphere.

 

After having spent time at the church, gazing at the gorgeous frescoes and walking around calmly at the site, we continued our trip. We walked through a small village on our way to a beautifully located restaurant. The restaurant hired both Serbian and Albanian staff and is therefore contributing to peace and integration in the region. We sat down at a long table and were served Serbian specialties. Outside, the restaurant had a little garden looking out over the hilly landscape. After dinner, all of us sat down there. We drank wine, smoked more cigarettes than we should, and watched the sun go down together. It felt as if our group had really fully settled in and come together.

 

 *Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

UNMIK: Should they stay or should they go?

By Annemijn van Marle

 

Tuesday 21 June 2022*

After having spent a beautiful and relaxing evening at a lake in northern Kosovo on the Serbian border on Monday, we were picked up the next day by our UN bus for a long and stimulating day. That morning, we first met with UNMIK, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, which had officially administered Kosovo between 1999 and 2008 and is still present to this day in their regional office in Mitrovica. Since we had spoken with some organizations and people who were critical of the current UN presence in Kosovo, I went in quite wary about what we would hear. We were received by several women, of which two were interns who held a presentation on the trust-building and the projects they were carrying out in the region. Mostly they are community-based and focused on bringing together Serbs and Albanians through, for example, outdoor education camps, supporting language learning, and art therapy. Other projects target unemployment, gender-based violence, and inequality regarding Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities.

 

During the Q&A section of our talk, questions centered mostly on the necessity of a UN presence and the international influence on the mission. Technically, it is not up to UNMIK itself to decide whether they are dissolved; only the UN Security Council can end the mandate (initiated by resolution 1244) through a vote that China and Russia currently block. However, the people of the office defended the UN's presence. One outspoken woman who represented the office politically, stated that “Kosovo needs UNMIK” to face the international community and gain legitimacy and strength as a state. She also countered the idea that the UN’s mission was imperialist, saying that “we are not here to bring values that are not already here.” 

 

This made me reflect on the relationship between the international community and the statehood of Kosovo. Many have argued that the success of the KLA/Kosovar independence movement rested on their aim and ability to draw in international backing from the U.S. and NATO. Similarly, while maybe imposing western liberal democracy and being problematically top-down, the UNMIK administration undeniably facilitated Kosovo’s declaration of independence by bringing international legitimacy and limiting renewed violence during the direct aftermath of the war.

 

Perhaps our discomfort was not necessarily caused by inherent problems of UN involvement in Kosovo, but by the fact that Kosovo is faring so well without a UN administration. After 2008 and 2013, UNMIK has had to adjust its mandate as Kosovo gained agency over its institutions, leaving UNMIK in charge of community projects very similar to some NGOs we had met in the previous days. In a way, they remind me of those parents we often complain about as students who have not yet recognized you can fend for yourself and awkwardly ask if you are sure you don’t want to bring your laundry over to their house. Of course, their investments are invaluable to those left behind in Kosovar society, like the Roma, unemployed youth, and victims of gender-based violence. In that sense, it might be too easy to write off any actions by the regional office today. But the UN missions’ presence is different from local NGOs in that it also has a symbolic presence, not only outwards to the international community but also to the Kosovar people. To them, UNMIK's presence signals that they are not yet recognized as a country that has full agency over its domestic affairs. No wonder then, that in the words of current president Vjosa Osmani “UNMIK has overstayed its welcome.”

 

After the meeting, we got a tour around the compound by one of the interns. We were led around the office where we had our meeting, and suddenly we stood eye to eye with a glistening brand-new building. Behind a large glass wall there was a gym and some offices. Then we walked up two sets of stairs and stepped onto a big rooftop terrace with a view over the desolate Trepca mining complex on one side and the lush green hills of the north on the other. Standing on the terrace, the intern told me that the building had opened just a few weeks ago and replaced containers that had been put there in a rush when the UN administration had to be set up right after the war. It was hard not to think of it as ironic that now that it is no longer all hands on deck, with its mandate and personnel shrinking every year, they decided to reaffirm their future presence by investing in a new office. They are really not ready to go yet. 

 *Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

A day of history and nature

By Adriana Scribani

 

Sunday 19 June 2020*

 

The day started with our usual meeting at Newborn square, as it’s been for the past five days, creating a routine that is already giving me a sense of comfort in a city that is slowly becoming more and more familiar to us. We hopped on the big bus at 9:30, and I gave my presentation during the drive towards Prizren, the historical capital of Kosovo. My presentation was about the city itself, so I tried to share with my fellow classmates all the facts and history that I managed to absorb the night before, which however came with some tiny difficulties, as I had to scream in the middle of the bus seats, turning left and right so that everyone could hear me. We soon arrived in Prizren, and as I stepped out of the bus, I looked to my right and was immediately struck by the green mountains that surrounded the city: at the foothills the dwellings sparsely started, and the elegant Mosque stood out among hundreds of squared houses with red-tiled roofs. 

 

We soon met our guide, a lovely middle-aged man who accompanied us for the whole day through the gems of this extremely old and rich city. Our first stop was the building of the League of Prizren, a very important Albanian resistance group that fought against the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and even funded its own government in 1881. The building was mostly destroyed during the 1998-1999 war but soon became fully reconstructed. We strolled around the museum for a bit, curiously looking at old portraits of Albanian political heroes and typical costumes and ornaments. Afterwards we reached the old Mosque, in the middle of the historical center of the city. The inside of the building was simply stunning, with elaborated flowery illustrations and verses of the Koran creating gorgeous decors in every single corner. I deeply enjoyed being inside of the building, the feeling of the soft carpet on my bare feet, the amazed looks of my friends around me, and the peace of the senses that spiritual places always bring me.

 

The next stop of our tour of Prizren was visiting the Roman fortress that guards the city from the top of the closest mountain. Reaching the fortress cost us liters of sweat and water, since we had to hike on a steep slope for almost half an hour before reaching it. We arrived at the arch at the entrance of the fortress with very little strength left but were soon rewarded as soon as we looked at the view. We could see the whole city unfurl in the valley, its gorgeous ancient buildings and the dozens of Mosques with their sharp minarets contrasting with the low, white and red houses. We had the chance to wander around the fortress for half an hour, and we had fun climbing around the stones and exploring the inner tunnels of this two-thousand-year-old construction, which got used and passed on from occupation to colonization to occupation again and is now one of the most famous historical sites of Kosovo.

 

My favorite moment of the day arrived after we left Prizren, and the big bus brought us to Albania! Anne surprised us in the morning with the news that crossing the border was possible, and that we were the second Peace Lab group to ever get the chance to go. We left the bus in front of the restaurant “Lugina e Drinit”, which has a wonderful terrace, overlooking the Black Drin: a wide blue lake, surrounded by green, gentle mountains. Before dinner, we went to the beautiful garden underneath the terrace, that descended with a moderate downhill until it reached the water. We stretched out on the lawn, staring at the beautiful landscape in front of us, talking about our thoughts about Prizren and its multicultural, colorful streets, and hyping up our excitement for our visit to Mitrovica the next day. After dinner some of us swam in the lake, while the rest decided to go back to the lawn, engaging in never-ending conversations and enjoying the sunset that was coming about on our right. Prizren and this little glimpse of Albania were two great gifts after the very busy days of the past week, and I felt extremely grateful for having the chance to discover the beauty of this region.

 

*Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

 

A day to remember

By Fleur Overbeek

23 June 2022*

(Image from http://theideaspartnership.org/wp/)

 

Our last day with meetings was definitely a day to remember. Despite that everyone was so tired, I felt like this day was the perfect last day of our trip to Kosovo. We met with The Ideas Partnership, Kosovo 2.0, Elizabeth Gowing, and even the Prime Minister Albin Kurti came by to quickly meet with us. Overall, it was a day full of interesting and contrasting experiences as we met people with completely different backgrounds within Kosovo, which left us with a more nuanced view of the situation and people in Kosovo.

 

We’ve been in Kosovo for 10 days already, and we’ve been to Prishtina, Mitrovica, Prizren, and even Albania. Visiting these places allowed us to meet different people from different ethnic groups within Kosovo. Multiple organizations talked about minorities in Kosovo, and how they work on the ‘integration’ of these minorities within the majority society and we heard about the prejudices against these minorities. One conversation that stuck with me during this trip was a conversation I had on our very first day in Kosovo. While we were in the taxi on our way to meet with IOM, I saw a woman with a child sitting on the side of the road. They sat on the grass in the burning sun while the cars tore along the road. I asked the taxi driver if he could tell me more about this situation. The kind taxi driver suddenly got very passionate and talked very negatively about this woman and her child. He told us that these people are Roma and that ‘they just don’t want to work, they choose to live like this, and it’s their own choice’. The tone in his voice shifted completely into disapproval. This passion surprised me and confronted me with the deeply embedded prejudices against Roma in the majority society of Kosovo.

 

Within our group, there were mixed feelings about our visit to The Ideas Partnership. This organization invited us to show the work they are doing for the Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities in Fushë Kosova, outside the city center of Prishtina. They built an education and health center for children and their parents. They focus on providing parents with the skills to financially support their own families, while the children go to school.

 

This visit caused many feelings and different thoughts. Some felt uncomfortable, afraid it was leaning towards ‘voluntourism’, and others believed it was important to see this part of Kosovo, and not to ignore these communities, especially since we have been hearing about these communities so much. And it is always better to talk with people than to talk about them. But apart from these mixed feelings, I think it was an important organization to meet because it provoked something in every single one of us. It may be in different and uncomfortable ways, but I noticed that this meeting was one of the meetings that sparked the most conversation. In the taxi on the way back, later while having a coffee or lunch, and even in the days afterwards, the conversations kept going. This was probably because we all had different emotional experiences, and meanwhile, we were trying not to relate it too much to ourselves as we are just here to understand and not to judge.

 

Meeting Elizabeth Gowing later that day was the perfect meeting to follow The Ideas Partnership. She co-founded The Ideas Partnership together with people from the communities, and now she is an advisor of Albin Kurti, who is the leader of Vetëvendosje and now prime minister of Kosovo. It was interesting to see how the same issues can be approached from a grassroots, bottom-up level, and from a top-down approach.

 

*Please note that the blogposts are not appearing in chronological order of the days of the trip.

Dashed hopes in the Balkans: The visa liberalization debate in Kosovo, a continual back-and-forth about citizens’ freedom of movement?

By Céline Paré

23 June 2022

This day--23 June 2022--could have been a day of hope and euphoria in Kosovo. The EU-Western Balkans leaders’ meeting in Brussels was set to discuss enlargement to the Western Balkans and, for many, was also expected to officially open the door of the Schengen area to Kosovar citizens. Had European leaders made the choice of granting Kosovo visa liberalization, Kosovars would have been swept up in celebration of their newly acquired freedom. Instead, Thursday was no different than any other day in Kosovo: individuals went on with their daily lives as they awaited news from the meeting, and finished the day disappointed but not really surprised to hear that the status quo had not been changed.

Kosovo has been hoping to obtain visa-free travel since 2012, when the government in place signed the European Commission’s Visa Liberalization Roadmap which established the criteria the country should satisfy in order to receive access to the Schengen area. In the ten years after that, Kosovo endeavored to and eventually succeeded in fulfilling the necessary requirements, yet did not acquire visa liberalization. Almost four years ago, in July 2018, the European Commission confirmed that Kosovo henceforth met all conditions to accede the visa-free travel zone, and therefore recommended the swift abolishment of the visa regime. The European Parliament followed suit a few months later by similarly calling for all visa requirements to be waived for Kosovar citizens. Despite these endorsements, frequently repeated over the years, the European Council still constitutes a final barrier to Kosovo’s access to the Schengen area.

 

The conversations I had with Kosovar citizens in the past week revealed that the absence of visa-free travel is perceived to be the most prominent issue faced by the country and its population. The feeling of being stuck, imprisoned in their own country, imprints the lives of Kosovars who consider themselves to be “left behind” by the international community insofar as “no one cares” about Kosovo. As a result of the visa regime, Kosovo is “isolated” from the rest of the world, which impedes its economic and social development. Moreover, in the long run, it threatens Kosovar society’s well-being and stability, insofar as it fuels agitation and unrest.

 

On the afternoon of June 22, we sat down with representatives of Kosovo’s Ministry of Justice who introduced to us the work they carry out to support Kosovo’s progress towards EU membership. The Department of European Integration and Policy Coordination is the entity responsible for making sure that Kosovo implements the Copenhagen criteria and the provisions laid out in the Stabilization and Association Agreement. In addition, it supervises the harmonization of Kosovo’s legislation with the EU’s Acquis Communautaire. In the course of that meeting, Mr. Lulzim Beqiri, the Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, expressed frustration at Kosovo’s slow-going visa liberalization process. Kosovo “has been closed since 1999,” he stated with regret. The youth have never been able to travel outside of its borders, apart to the six countries with which it has a visa-free travel agreement – Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Maldives. Kosovo was given ninety-five criteria to fulfill, over twice as much as other states in the region, he remarked with bitterness in his voice. And despite meeting all of them, Kosovo is still constrained by a visa regime.

 

Nonetheless, Beqiri conveyed optimism about the then upcoming meeting in Brussels, asserting that “positive signals” had been received from France and the Netherlands – the two countries most opposing Kosovo’s visa liberalization. He radiated enthusiasm and anticipation, echoing the sentiment of many of the individuals we had encountered throughout Kosovo in the days before. Learning that nothing had come out of the Brussels meeting at dinner the next day felt like a punch in the gut, as I thought of all of the individuals who had shared their hopes and dreams with me being let down by European politicians once more.

 

At the Ministry of Justice, Beqiri had indeed reiterated what representatives of UNMIK Regional Office in Mitrovica had insinuated to us a few days earlier: that Kosovo’s visa liberalization debate is more a matter of European geopolitics than a question of internal stability and development. In that regard, it appears that the European Council’s obstruction of Kosovo’s visa liberalization process reflects not only the interplay of several domestic agendas but also an overall lack of political will from EU Member States to confer Kosovar citizens the same rights that their own nationals enjoy.

Looking into the mirror

By Anicca Marie Juraschka Sullivan

Wednesday 22 June 2022 

 

“Until 2019, the fine you would get for beating your woman in public was similar to the fine you get for parking wrong” - this sentence by Dafina Prekazi, Project Manager at the Kosovo Gender Studies Center, really struck me. We are standing on the sidewalk next to a bustling street in Pristina, taxis are honking, and pedestrians are passing by. Everything around us is buzzing, moving, but we are standing still, heads tilted upward, staring at a previously insignificant grey building. In the past days, this grey wall has been transformed into a powerful mural, initiated by the Kosovo Gender Studies Center, and painted by artist Fitore Berisha. “Today is a special day,” Dafina tells us. We are the first group they officially reveal the freshly completed mural to.

 

Two women’s faces are painted on a vibrant blue background, their eyes staring down at us reproachfully. A shiver runs down my spine, I feel observed. I can’t decide whether I find the women’s eyes cold, strong, disappointed, beautiful, angry, scared, or everything at once. While I try to figure out what I am feeling and seeing, Dafina elaborates on the meaning of the artwork. Its purpose is to honor the victims of femicide in Kosovo, especially since the number of women killed by domestic violence has increased during the pandemic. Both women depicted on the wall are ghosts, killed by their husbands. Their eyes are focused on the observer, signaling how these women feel betrayed by society, silently calling “why didn’t you do anything?” Shards of mirrors sparkle warningly in the corner of their eyes and in their eyebrows, making society reflect on the need for action. “The mirror pieces are supposed to make you look at yourself. We can do more, need to do more. We need to prevent future cases,” Dafina says.

 

After hearing the meaning behind the mural, my thoughts start spiraling. “Until 2019, the fine you would get for beating your woman in public was similar to the fine you get for parking wrong” - again and again, this sentence echoes throughout my head. How is it possible that women’s lives are still considered worth less than men’s in our world? How is it possible that we are seen as so inferior, as objects that can be utilized as a tool for men to feel powerful and in control? I turn to Dafina, asking her, hopefully, whether the number of cases has decreased, now that domestic violence is officially a criminal offense in Kosovo. She shakes her head, telling me that the reported numbers have actually gone up. “But this is good because it means more women are daring to report abuse, and this results in us being able to help more victims.”

 

The role of women in Kosovo is something I am struggling to wrap my mind around. On the one hand, Kosovan women’s lives are impacted by the daily reality of living in a strongly patriarchal society with deeply ingrained sexism, and domestic violence toward women remains a big societal issue. On the other hand, more and more Kosovar women are becoming empowered and are taking on leadership positions. Viosa Osmani, for example, is currently Kosovo’s second female president - an achievement that the Netherlands can currently only dream of. Speaking to these amazing women’s rights activists at the Kosovo Gender Studies Center made me realize two things: Kosovo still has a long way to go when it comes to gender equality and respectful treatment of women, but it is moving in the right direction. Let us hope that the glittering eyes of the victims depicted on this powerful mural will remind everyone passing by that each one of us has the responsibility to fight for this right direction, step by step. Not only in Kosovo, but worldwide.