HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CALLS KOSOVO CRISIS 'HUMAN RIGHTS CATASTROPHE'

HR/99/39
06 May 1999

Mary Robinson Travels to Sarajevo Today

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said in Tirana today that the crisis in and around Kosovo is a human rights catastrophe as well as a humanitarian disaster.

At the end of a two-day visit to Albania, Mrs. Robinson said refugees she had spoken to in Durres and Tirana had given her detailed accounts of the massive human rights violations that had driven them from their homes in Kosovo. 'In addition to requiring material aid, the refugees are also thirsty for justice and accountability. It is too late to prevent the current catastrophe, but we owe it to the survivors and the victims to make sure that the ethnic cleansers of today have no impunity tomorrow', she said.

'This is a wake-up call to the international community', she said. 'The signs of this tragedy were there for all to see for a long time. We must move away from crisis management and towards crisis prevention'.

Mrs. Robinson said the Special Mission her Office has established in Tirana is cooperating with international partners in collecting, verifying and cross checking testimonies from refugees. She stressed the importance of coordinating these efforts in order to establish an accurate and professional system for monitoring the human rights abuses in Kosovo. This, she continued, would go a long way to assure the prosecution of those responsible for atrocities and would continue to lay the groundwork for prevention of future abuses.

As part of coordination efforts, Mrs. Robinson met in Tirana with representatives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and its Kosovo Verification Mission and the Council of Europe. Among other activities, she participated in a discussion with human rights non-governmental organizations receiving training from the Council in cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner.

During visits to the Mali I Robit and Pishinat camps, the High Commissioner also heard concernsabout the possible emergence of problems affecting women and children refugees, including trafficking for commercial sexual purposes.

In her tour of the Balkans, which started on 2 May in Skopje, the High Commissioner has emphasized the importance of feeding the information collected on violations in Kosovo into the different mechanisms of the Commission, including those on torture, summary and arbitrary executions, enforced disappearances and violence against women. During the last session of the Commission, which ended on 30 April, Mrs. Robinson briefed the panel regularly on the crisis in Kosovo.

The Commission, the main human rights organ of the United Nations, condemned the atrocities in the province and requested the High Commissioner to report to it on possible action.

The information being collected would also be provided to the different United Nations panels monitoring the application of treaties on the rights of women and children. This should constitute an important step in establishing accountability in Kosovo and reinforce a system of early warning and prevention of massive human rights abuses, she said. Mrs. Robinson added, however, that no amount of early warning will ever prove useful if there is no political will to act on its findings.

Staff from the Office of the High Commissioner have been deployed in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro to investigate allegations from Kosovar refugees and others of grave human rights violations in the province. This field presence is to be reinforced with the arrival shortly of additional monitors made available by the Norwegian and Swiss Governments.

The High Commissioner is travelling today to Sarajevo, from where she will go to Montenegro. She will then visit Zagreb and Belgrade.