Dacic: 210,000 people left Kosovo and Metohija fleeing ethnic hatred, not even 2 percent returned

Photo: Milena Djordjevic

10,284 people have been forced to leave their homes in Kosovo and Metohija because of ethnic hatred, of which the largest number are Serbs, as well as other non-Albanian communities - Romani, Ashkali and Goranis, Serbian Foreign Affairs Minister Ivica Dacic said today in Geneva. At the session of the 74th UNHCR Executive Committee, Dacic stated that, according to UNHCR data on voluntary non-majority returns to Kosovo and Metohija, only 12,707 internally displaced persons returned to the southern Serbian province.

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"Due to numerous obstacles, including threats and violence, the sustainable return is even lower and is estimated at less than two percent," stressed the head of Serbian diplomacy, adding that such a small number of returnees to Kosovo and Metohija is disappointing.

He recalled that according to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, the return of displaced persons is one of the main tasks of the international presence and the provisional institutions of self-government in Kosovo and Metohija.

The Serbian foreign minister said that internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Serbia are unable to exercise their basic right to freely choose between local integration and sustainable return.

The reason for this is that in Kosovo and Metohija even 20 years after the establishment of the international presence, the conditions for a sustainable return have not been provided, he said - in terms of the necessary guarantees of personal and property safety, the rule of law, absence of discrimination and respect for basic human and civil rights.

"The Republic of Serbia treats the creation of conditions for finding permanent and sustainable solutions for all displaced persons as one of the key issues on whose solution the stabilization of conditions in the region depends. We recall that, along with the work to meet the needs of the IDPs, the rights they have in their place of origin must not be forgotten," stated Dacic.

(Telegraf.rs)