Peacebuilding or ‘Peacedelaying’: Social Exclusion of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in Post-war Serbia

Abstract

Since the end of Kosovo war (1999), peacebuilding efforts of local and international actors in Serbia have been mainly focused on improving the socioeconomic situation. The liberal peace administrated in Serbia implied, among other things, the country transformation towards a more open and deregulated model of economy, and inevitably led to the ‘commodification of welfare’ [Pugh, M. (2009). Towards life welfare. In E. Newman, R. Paris, & O. Richmond (Eds.), New perspectives on liberal peacebuilding (pp. 78–97). New York, NY: United Nations University Press] through market-oriented policies and tools. The transition also created deep social cleavages between the winners and the losers of war-to-peace transition, and further marginalized the most vulnerable groups in the society. This applies in particular to forced migrants, refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and internally displaced persons from Kosovo. By employing the concept of social exclusion the paper investigates to which extent the marginalization of these groups is the result of liberal peacebuilding, and if such effects are causing ‘peacedelaying’ in post-war Serbia.

Acknowledgements

The first draft of this paper has been presented at the International Studies Association 57th annual convention in Atlanta, USA. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on previous versions of the paper.

Notes

1 In the liberal understanding of peacebuilding (peace as governance), statebuilding is seen as the central point of post-conflict and development efforts. This is most evident in Kosovo since 1999 and East Timor since 2002 (Lemay-Hebert, 2009, 2011).

2 Similarly, in Bosnia and Herzegovina there is Ministry for Veterans and Disabled Veterans, while in the Republic of Serbia one ministry is in charge for the issues of labour, employment, welfare and veterans.

3 In period between 2001 and 2009 the share of younger population decreased while the number of elderly increased reaching 30% of total population (see Vujadinović et al., 2011).

4 From September 1991, United Nations Security Council adopted a number of resolutions, imposing (economic) sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which had devastating effects on economy and trade, standard of living and environment. One of the resolutions with farreaching consequences was the UNSCR 757, adopted in May 1992, which imposed a wide range of measures severing economic links with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It prevented imports of all commodities and products originating from FRY and the sale of commodities and products to FRY, it imposed a ban on making funds available to Serbia and Montenegro, on scientific and technical cooperation, while all the flights to or from the FRY were shut down. Couple of months later, in November 1992, Resolution 787 was adopted, by which all the shipments of energy supplies and various commodities through FRY were prohibited.

5 Horizontal inequalities are defined by Stewart as ‘inequalities between culturally defined groups or groups with shared identities … formed by religion, ethnic ties or racial affiliations, or other salient factors which bind groups of people together’ (Stewart, 2008, pp. 12–13).

6 In Serbia less than 30% of refugees possess private housing. Still, majority (approx. 42%) lives in rented forms of accommodation, while 20% lives with their families and friends. Something less than 10% lives in collective centres and other state funded facilities (Terzan & Kladarin, 2009, pp. 42–43).

7 Lack of adequate housing has been one of the biggest problems of refugees and IDPs since their arrival to Serbia. In order to provide durable solutions to their housing problems, countries of the region (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) jointly initiated the Regional Housing Program (RHP), which is an integral part of 'Sarajevo process on refugees and IDPs' initiated in 2005, and re-launched in 2010.

In the case of Serbia, RHP should provide assistance to 16.780 households, from the following two categories: Category I (2%): includes all 1991–1995 refugees, regardless of their status, who are residents of collective centres or other forms of collective accommodation, either formal or informal ones and Category II (98%) includes all 1991–1995 vulnerable refugees, accommodated privately and all former occupancy right holders without a durable solution in their country of origin or reception country. (Regional Housing Program, 2017)

This could potentially solve the problems of refugee families living in (in)formal collective centres, but does not address the problem of housing of IDPs, who constitute majority in the collective centres.

8 According to state officials in Serbia, 5–10% of remaining refugees and IDPs are planning to return to their country of origin. In last 15 years a number of refugees has been re-integrated into Croatia (69,500), BiH and other former Yugoslav countries (79,000), or other countries (40,000) (Commissariat, 2015). In the case of Kosovo, the number of returnees is very low and restricted only to environments with a majority Serbian population (north of Kosovo). According to the UNHCR, only 20,000 returned to Kosovo, by the end of 2012. However, the sustainability of those returns is questionable or extremely weak (Lukić, 2015).

9 Within the group of IDPs, there is a category that has been especially disadvantaged. This group consists of people who have been returning to Serbia after the Readmission Agreement with the EU was signed, and who were previously granted a status of IDPs in Serbia. By signing the Agreement, Serbia has become obliged to readmit its citizens illegally residing in the EU member states, third country nationals and stateless persons.

10 Phrases such as ‘Now you are returning, and when you were killing us and burning our houses, where were you then?’ could be commonly heard in daily inter-ethnic interactions (Koska, 2008, p. 203).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Open Society Foundation under Grant [IN2016–29163].