This website is designed to provide information on the state of human rights for the Roma people in Kosovo. You can find the latest news and background information on the deportations of Kosovo-Roma from European Union member states. In addition, we present inquiries and analyses pertaining to the expulsion of Roma from the Kosovo in the aftermath of the Kosovo War in 1999.

 

Hardly noticed by the international public, two thirds of formerly 150.000 Roma were driven out of Kosovo by Albanian nationalists in summer and fall of 1999 – while the NATO-troops, already based in the Kosovo, looked on. The European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) identified these pogroms as the “biggest catastrophe” for Roma after World War Two.

 

Violence, lack of legal security, restrictions to free movement motivated by ethnic segregation, poverty, the EU’s restrictive migration regime – there is a number of burning issues that many citizens of the Kosovo have to face nowadays, irrespective of their ethnicity. Especially for Kosovarian Roma, living conditions have seriously deteriorated since the war in 1999.

Regardless of the continuously difficult situation in Kosovo and under persistent pressure by the German government, the government of Kosovo agreed in April 2010 to accept deportations of all members of ethnic minorities to Kosovo. Focusing on the deportation of Roma and Ashkali, the agreement was made in opposition to explicit warnings by numerous human rights organizations.

 

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