Dialogue leads to potential breakthrough in Kosovo property rights cases

Ongoing dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade has resulted in a new agreement aimed at resolving the huge backlog of property claims.

By Linda Karadaku for Southeast European Times in Pristina -- 27/09/11

Claims and counter claims about ownership of land and homes have dragged on for more than a decade. [Reuters]

It's an essential economic issue, a legacy of the 1998-1999 war: the effort to reclaim homes and land abandoned during and after the conflict by thousands of people who ran for their lives. Albanians returned almost immediately, but most of displaced Serbs did not. Most of them have spent years nearly 11 years trying to reclaim their property.

The issue falls under the purview of the Kosovo Property Agency. The overall figure is enormous, as is the backlog of cases in municipal courts: out of 41,253 requests related to property issues, less than half -- 20,081 -- have been resolved by the Commission for the Property Requests. The rest are being processed in hopes of resolving them by the end of next year, agency spokesman Arian Krasniqi tells SETimes.

Zivojin Jokanovic, a Serb lawyer in Pristina, is skeptical. "There is no reason to have 50% of the cases unresolved," he tells SETimes.

Jokanovic complains of inefficiency and in some cases, a lack of expertise, resources and personnel. He says that Pristina municipal court, for example, simply cannot resolve its cases with the current number of judges, even over the course of the next seven or eight years. The deadline for submitting claims was December 2007.

One of the biggest problems is the cadaster books, which are incomplete. For some families, there is no data at all. But help may be on the way.

The government published on Wednesday (September 21st) details of a new agreement struck during ongoing EU-mediated talks in Brussels. Under the terms of it, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to work together to reconstruct a reliable pre-1999 cadastre record, identify gaps, establish an agency to resolve document discrepancies, and work with the EU to adjudicate the remaining cases.

Dejan Nikolcevic, head of cabinet for Kosovo's Minister for Returns and Communities, says settling property rights is a precondition for the permanent return of displaced persons. "Unfortunately, I have to say that even though the issue of personal property is one of basic human rights, it remains only on paper for now, not only for the returnees, but also for the potential returnees," Nikolcevic tells SETimes.

The property issue, he adds, is far from unique to Kosovo; it is echoed in many other Balkan countries. "This issue represents a long term process and requires [the] ... engagement of all institutions in accordance with European standards," Nikolcevic said.

The OSCE published a report in June of this year on the challenges in resolving conflicts related to residential property claims in Kosovo. It found that a large number of land and buildings, mainly belonging to displaced persons, continue to be illegally occupied.

"The lack of restitution of property for those affected by the conflict hinders the return process and adversely affects the human rights of all Kosovo communities, particularly Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanian communities," it added, pointing out that "the resolution of conflict-related property claims is a necessary process which greatly impacts the stability of a post-conflict society."

Source: SETimes.com