DEVELOPMENT: UN’s Massive Relief Operation in Balkans

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 1999 (IPS) - The United Nations is planning a major post-war humanitarian operation in south-eastern Europe to remedy the economic and environmental devastation caused by the 11- week aerial bombing of Yugoslavia by US-led allied military forces.

“The daunting task has just begun,” says UN spokesman Fred Eckhard, speaking to reporters less than 48 hours after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) decided to suspend its bombing.

Under-Secretary General Sergio Vieira de Mello, who led a UN inter-agency mission to Yugoslavia last month, has proposed an “integrated regional strategy” that will encompass all countries in south-eastern Europe directly, or indirectly, affected by the war.

Such countries include Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

A new 32-page UN report released Friday says that the proposed strategy, whether packaged as a “Marshall Plan for the Balkans”, or under any other designation, should not only cover the entire region but also be integrated into the overall activities of the United Nations, including its peacekeeping and peace-making efforts.

US President Bill Clinton has put on record that, while Washington will continue to provide humanitarian assistance, it will “provide no support for the reconstruction of Serbia as long as he (President Slobodan Milosevic) remains in power.”

The UN inter-agency study, submitted to the Security Council Friday, gives details of the destruction caused by the bombing and also lays out the proposed UN plan to provide sustenance to the 850,000 Kosovo Albanians displaced by the war.

“The crisis in Kosovo has resulted in the mass forced displacement and deportation of hundreds and thousands of civilians, wholesale destruction of property and means of livelihood, wanton lawlessness and violence, thousands of documented killings, countless as-yet undocumented deaths, and immeasurable human suffering,” the report notes.

The proposed UN humanitarian operation will include protection, food assistance, health care, nutrition and emergency rehabilitation.

The study warns that the forthcoming winter will cause “tremendous hardship for millions of civilians throughout the territory of Yugoslavia, in particular Kosovo, given the wide- scale damage to housing, infrastructure and essential services.”

The United Nations is planning to cooperate with intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations to re- establish the necessary humanitarian and development presence in Yugoslavia, including Belgrade, Pristina and Podgorica.

The UN team was shown “much physical destruction and damage caused by NATO air strikes in all areas of Serbia visited.”

The Yugoslav Red Cross has given figures of more than 700 civilian deaths and 6,400 civilian injuries, with many more having lost their houses in the attacks. The UN team, however, said it was unable to verify the accuracy of these statistics.

The impact of the conflict has been particularly severe in Kosovo where agriculture accounted for more than 40 percent of the economy before the war, with more than 60 percent of the population living in rural areas. Kosovar children also have been affected by problems ranging from disruption of schooling to being victims of attacks or witnessing the deaths of others.

Many women in Kosovo have lost everything and find themselves as heads of households, faced with the difficult responsibility of trying to provide food, shelter and protection for themselves and surviving relatives, the report notes.

The conflict also seriously compounded an already poor public health situation in Kosovo and added a new dimension to the already unfavourable external environment for many “transition economies” of Eastern Europe, worsening further their short-term economic outlook.

On the economic front, virtually all of Yugoslavia’s neighbors, including Albania, Croatia and Hungary, have lost important markets as well as traditional supplies in Yugoslavia.

The transport links to and from the south-eastern part of Europe have been severely impaired: navigation along the Danube has been paralysed by the destroyed bridges, and all traffic through Yugoslavia (ground, rail and air) has been brought to a halt.

According to the report, the negative effects are particularly strong on international trade between western Europe, the main trading partner, and the countries locked in the Balkan region (in particular, Bulgaria, Romania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

As alternative routes have a limited capacity, this has resulted in the interruption of important trade flows.

The study also points out that the conflict has increased investors’ perception of risk in the whole area surrounding the zone of conflict restraining access to international financial markets and raise borrowing costs for the affected countries.