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Nada Sekulic
- Professor of social antropology
Green Party Eco
MAPPING THE PROBLEM
OF REFUGEES IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA
The problem of refugees
and IDP's (internally displaced people) is one of the most
serious problems that FRY has faced with during the last decade.
At the moment, there are about 700 000 people from Croatia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo that have found shelter
in FRY (around 500 000 from Croatia and BIH and 200 000 from
Kosovo).
Due to the fact that
most of them came to Yugoslavia without any preparation and
without provided and developed official assistance, that is,
in the middle of the war, their arriving to Yugoslavia was
marked by growing poverty and political incapacity to improve
their social status. Namely, trying to escape from the war
region often in the middle of the armed conflicts, most of
them came to Yugoslavia without any property or cash, even
without their identity papers and relevant documents. Having
arrived on the border with FRY, they were directed to different
collective centers in Serbia where some of them have stayed
for several years. Some families were separated during this
displacement, because of the low space capacity of the different
collective centers. The conditions in collective centers were
different, but in general very bad. Usually, people were placed
in ruined buildings, where families were separated by improvised
room dividers and screens, so that families of four or six
persons had to live in a very small space, often without any
heating during the winter and without electricity. Some of
them were placed "temporarily" in school buildings and summer
camps belonging to the Red Cross or similar organizations,
which, unfortunately, provoked negative reactions from local
people. FRY government and different international human aid
organizations provided collective centers with food, blankets
and hygienic materials only in the beginning and never on
regular bases and in accordance to the coordinated and long
term plans. The main negative result of this uncontrolled
and uncoordinated process was that refugees were not really
empowered or supported, and in spite of that, the pressure
of the government, as well as of local population, to close
collective centers became stronger and stronger.
This situation brings
us to the present. Today, there are only around 600 collective
centers left and only small percentage of refugees live in
them. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that most of displaced
people have settled down or solved their problems. To illustrate
this, it should be mention that for the first time ever, Serbia
has formulated a comprehensive plan of solving the bad status
of refugees during the June 2002, which is obviously pretty
late. Where are the thousands of people who have left collective
centers and how did they managed to support themselves? This
brings us to the main problem which we would like to emphasize
in this brief presentations dealing with the problem of cultural
change in the process of transition. This is the problem of
invisibility of refugees. If we look into the past decade,
we can notice that 700 000 of people, which is almost 10%
of whole population in FRY, were invisible, despite the fact
that they were and still are everywhere in Serbia as well
as in Monte Negro.
Some basic civil and
human rights, belonging to every human, including the refugees,
have been seriously imperiled in their case. For example,
from the beginning, they haven't had the right to move freely,
the right to choose their place of residence, their right
to vote have been seriously imperiled, due to the disintegration
of former Yugoslavia, they have lost their citizenship and
lived for years without right for legal job etc. etc. Most
of these problems have not been solved yet.
The project proposed
and presented by the Serbian government can hardly bee called
comprehensive, since it covers only the problems of elderly
refugees. In the framework of their plan, they plan to provide
free accommodation in apartments or houses for the underprivileged
and favorable housing loans or soft credits for starting small
and medium-sized enterprises for those better-off. In fact,
housing focuses mostly on elderly refugee population, including
increasing the capacity of several existing old peoples' homes.
Refugees will be allowed to exercise their right to safe return
to their countries and the right to full local integration
in Serbia, which some 60 percent of refugees fully support.
Anyway, mechanisms of their integration or their returning
are not specified, due to the lack of financial resources
or necessary common conclusions and contracts between Croatia
and FRY. For example, at this moment, refugee population from
Croatia (that is, population of Serbian ethnicity and Orthodox
religious background) hasn't any guarantees that their property
will be returned to them after their returning to Croatia.
The same concerns IDPs from Kosovo, whose security in Kosovo
is even worse.
The rough financial estimation
of Serbian government is that 750 000 $ will be necessary
to implement their plan (covering the problems of mostly elderly
people) and only 150 000 $ will provide government.
However, international
organizations look upon this issue as it shouldn't be longer
treated as humanitarian problem, that is, as a problem of
high priority. IN our opinion, this is the way of neglecting
responsibility of rich for the global changes in current world,
which affect mostly countries in transition. The problem of
refugees is a part of global problem related to the globalization
of the world. Humanitarian aid, given to refugee population
around the globe can be treated only as a symbolical gesture
if it is not accompanied with sustainable support, which means
support aimed at long term empowerment of displaced person,
including all legislative as well as material support which
is necessary to reestablish normal life. If compared to the
amount of money given to the armament of the most powerful
countries such as USA or developed countries in general, funds
provided for refugees are almost irrelevant, particularly
if we have in mind that the problem of refugees has been generated
by wars provoked in different parts of the world. Just to
illustrate, we can mention the case of Afghanistan, where
USA strongly contributed to the development of Taliban's'
regime and later on bombed all country with the purpose to
remove them from power. To understand the proportion of their
real investment, we should compare the amount of money provided
for bombs with the amount of money provided for humanitarian
aid (satirically, the humanitarian aid was also thrown from
the airplanes and was flexibly adapted to oriental menu).
Our conclusion is that
refugees today are left without proper support. Humanitarian
aid is distributed sparsely over the globe more with the purpose
to symbolically illustrate that rich countries are prepare
to provide some support then it really represents organized
support to prevent escalation of wars and provide necessary
comprehensive support for refugees. The problem of refugees
is a part of current globalization process. It is not generated
and based only on local ethnic, religious or similar conflicts
and problems. Rich countries are deeply involved in the process
of generating the problem of refugees. Their responsibility
and their capacity to improve or make worse position of refugees
as well as poor people in general is not clearly emphasized
yet.
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