New plans for ACT assistance to Kosovo Crisis

Geneva, June 18, 1999
An ACT Team in Kosovo continues to wait for final agreements with UNHCR regarding where in Kosovo, ACT should start its relief activities. Depending on the location such activities could include initial food and non-food distributions, assistance with shelter as well as longer-term work for reconstruction of homes and social services including water and sanitation.

Part of the ACT team has today gone to the Mitrovica region, which is one of the areas where ACT Kosovo may start operations soon. Early indications from KFOR forces in the area, speak of severely damages homes and villages.

Decisions as to where ACT and other NGOs should start working becomes all the more urgent with the rapid return of Kosovo Albania refugees. Yesterday some 18.000 refugees were estimated to have returned from Macedonia and Albania. The ACT team reported that the last 30 km of the road from Macedonia to Pristina was just one long line of cars with returnees.

The rapid return of the refugees has to be seen in light of the continuing discoveries of extreme atrocities committed by the Serbian forces operating in Kosovo before and during the NATO air campaign. Military sources yesterday estimated that maybe as many as 10.000 Kosovo Albanian may have been killed. One of the primary worries of those who return now would be to get news of families and friends gone missing, as well as to inspect the state of their homes and other properties.

The situation concerning the Serbian population in Kosovo is also urgent. The ACT team yesterday had a brief meeting with the Serbian Orthox Patriarch, Pavle, shortly after his arrival to Pristina. Patriarch Pavle has repeatedly urged the ethnic Serbs to remain in Kosovo. He does so despite reports of atrocities committed against monks and nuns of the Orthodox Church in monasteries such as those in Gracanica, Musutiste and Devic. Despite the Patriarch's appeal as many as 50.000 Ethnic Serbs may already have fled their homes and gone to Serbia or Montenegro.

As part of the ACT response to the Kosovo Crisis, ACT-IOCC is planning to assist 1.500 ethnic Serbian families who have been displaced to Serbia. Upon arrival in Serbia these families are being directed to provisional refugee shelters in municipalities such as Vranje, Leskovac, Prkuplje, Kursumlija, Lebane and Nis. The initial plan is to assist these people for at least three months.

ACT's work for refugees and displaced in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia is continuing and a revised appeal for that as well as an appeal for the new work described above will be issued as soon as all relevant information is available.

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