USAID ROMA RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM: PROGRESS AFTER A

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PRISTINA 000149 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SCE, DRL, INL USAID/E&E FOR LAUREN RUSSELL NSC FOR HELGERSON E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/08/2019 TAGS: EAID PGOV PREL UNMIK KV SUBJECT: USAID ROMA RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM: PROGRESS AFTER A LOST DECADE Classified By: Ambassador Tina S. Kaidanow for Reasons 1.4 (b),(d). ¶1. (U) Summary: USAID has initiated a long term resettlement project for 50 Roma families residing in two camps for internally displaced persons in north Mitrovica. The camp residents continue to suffer life-threatening health effects from lead poisoning over nine years after moving into the UNMIK-managed camps. Several international partners have expressed interest in creating complementary programs to USAID,s project that would resettle the remaining IDPs and permanently close the camps. Long term efforts to permanently resolve the housing, health, livelihood and security issues for camp residents and other RAE (Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian) communities in the north will depend on cooperation from local officials in Mitrovica, both Serb and Albanian, and from Belgrade. In the meantime, the plight of the camp residents has attracted growing public attention. End Summary. THE CAMPS: 10 YEARS OF ILLNESS AND INERTIA ¶2. (C) Currently there are 142 households comprising approximately 600 Roma-Ashkali-Egyptian (RAE) individuals residing in the Cesmin Lug and Osterode camps in the north Mitrovica municipality. Cesmin Lug is an informal shantytown originally established by the UN as a temporary shelter in 1999 for RAE IDPs who lost their homes in the Roma Mahala (a neighborhood in south Mitrovica) during the 1999 conflict. UN plans to relocate camp residents after 45 days to permanent housing never materialized. In 2006, two camps located in Kablare and Zitkovac were destroyed and their residents were relocated together with many Cesmin Lug residents to Osterode. The new camp was established on the site of a former KFOR barracks for French troops. Unlike Cesmin Lug, Osterode provides camp residents with prefabricated dwellings, electricity and running water, a rudimentary health clinic, women,s center and youth center. A local NGO, the Kosovo Agency for Advocacy and Development (KAAD),took over management of the camps on January 1, 2009 under the authority of the Kosovo Ministry of Community and Returns. ¶3. (U) The proximity of the camps to the nearby abandoned Trepca mining and smelting complex is the source of severe lead poisoning of camp residents. Trepca,s industrial complex dates from the 1930s and was once the largest mining facility in Europe. A byproduct of Trepca,s operations is an immense slag heap of trace metals including zinc, arsenic, lead, and cadmium that is approximately a half mile up wind from the RAE camps. In 2004, after subsequent testing revealed lead levels that were 10 to 20 times maximum safe levels, the World Health Organization recommended the immediate evacuation of Cesmin Lug. (Note: Residents of Osterode, where contaminated top soil was removed and then paved over, have lower lead levels (although still dangerously high) than residents of Cesmin Lug. In 2005 a U.S. Army environmental assessment team tested sporadic sites within the Roma Mahala and Osterode, and found the soil in both places to be less polluted than at sites tested at Cesmin Lug. End Note). Successive attempts to move the Roma out of the camps have failed. Albanian municipal officials in south Mitrovica repeatedly delayed efforts to rebuild the Roma Mahalla, and the Roma,s lack of land titles to their former properties have slowed repatriation. Also, many camp residents have resisted leaving the camps, concerned about their security if they move to the Albanian side of the ethnically divided city and further worried that they could lose government stipends provided by Belgrade. (Note: The rebuilding of the Roma Mahalla in south Mitrovica, funded by the Dutch and Norwegian governments, is proceeding slowly. Phase 1 of the project is complete and approximately 400 Roma are now living in the Mahalla. Phase 2 is nearing completion and an additional two apartment blocks of three floors each will be ready for residents to move into by April 2009. The two buildings will house 24 RAE families of which 14 will be from Cesmin Lug and Osterode. This project phase is also focusing on livelihood sustainability and an increase in financial support to construct public service utilities in the Roma Mahalla. End Note). PRISTINA 00000149 002 OF 004 RESTART PROGRAM: GOALS AND OBSTACLES ¶4. (U) In October 2008, USAID began implementation of its RAE assistance program, the Roma-Ashkali-Egyptian Economic, Social, Transition, Advocacy and Resettlement/ Reintegration (RESTART) program, through its local implementer Mercy Corps. The RESTART program is a USD 2.4 million initiative designed to permanently resettle approximately 200 individuals from 50 RAE families currently residing in the Cesmin Lug and Osterode camps. RESTART will provide improved access to education, health care and social services and will also offer livelihood assistance in the form of job training or small business loans to program participants. In February, Mercy Corps completed the mapping phase of the program and has selected the 50 RAE families that will participate in RESTART. Full implementation of the program - including building housing units at a location still to be determined - will take approximately 24 months. Camp residents have grown distrustful of outsiders over the last decade in the wake of a string of broken promises to assist or relocate them; RESTART is designed to ensure that they are the primary decision-makers during the resettlement process, from planning to relocation to integration. ¶5. (C) The danger posed by lead poisoning to the health of camp residents, a large percentage of whom are children and women of child-bearing age, has catalyzed efforts by the international community, medical professionals and NGO activists to close the camps. However, these efforts have produced few tangible results over the past decade. Throughout their history the Roma have been marginalized and discriminated against in Kosovo, by both the Serb and Albanian communities. In the late 1990s thousands either fled the country as fighting erupted or were forced out by ethnic Albanians who blamed them for collaborating with Serbs during their struggle for independence. Assistance efforts aimed at relocating camp residents from Cesmin Lug and Osterode are further complicated in that the camps are located in north Mitrovica, a major geopolitical fault line separating Belgrade and Pristina. Camp residents are fearful they may be targets of anti-Roma violence if they resettle south of the Ibar River. Also, as previous efforts to rebuild the Roma Mahalla were general returns projects, they did not consider the specific health and education needs of the populations of Cesmin Lug and Osterode. Most RAE IDPs have preferred to remain in northern Kosovo, although Mercy Corps reports that attitudes toward moving to the south are changing as RAE IDP plans to settle in the north encounter resistance from local Serb officials and lingering concerns about health treatment for lead contamination, access to Serbian-language schooling, and access to social support are addressed. Any plans to resettle the Roma in the north are hostage to cooperation not just from local Serb authorities but also from Belgrade and Pristina officials. LEAD POISONING: ACTION AND REACTION ¶6. (C) The World Health Organization, working in tandem with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, conducted extensive blood testing of camp residents in late 2008 and informally shared their findings with the international community and Pristina officials in January. Blood lead levels (BLL) of camp residents have been recorded as high as 100 ug/dL, among the highest ever documented in medical literature. According to the WHO, approximately 30 percent of children in Cesmin Lug have BLL of 45 ug/dL or higher, the level at which CDC recommends medical intervention. In the U.S. and Western Europe, a BLL higher than 5 ug/dL is unusual. The WHO and CDC have warned that camp children are at high risk of suffering from serious developmental and behavioral problems from long term lead exposure, and many are already exhibiting signs of permanent impairment. Previous chelation or blood cleaning efforts to treat camp residents for lead poisoning are not currently being performed, both for lack of funding and clear evidence that the camp residents in Cesmin Lug were simply being repoisoned by the existing toxic environment. The recent BLL findings, a reconfirmation of three prior rounds of blood testing conducted in recent years, initiated a short-lived flurry of consultations earlier this year between international donors and GOK officials to develop PRISTINA 00000149 003 OF 004 options to close the camps, resettle the Roma to a safer location, and provide residents with long term medical treatment. The UNDP, OSCE, European Commission and several European countries have expressed interest in creating a process to close the camps. The European Commission and United Kingdom have told us they are considering assistance programs that would complement the RESTART program's efforts to resettle the remaining RAE families who will still reside at the camps after RESTART selects 50 RAE families for permanent resettlement. However, these intentions have yet to materialize into action, and a promised UNDP-sponsored donor meeting on the subject has not materialized three months after it was broached. Two weeks ago infighting among senior GOK officials erupted over who would manage the issue when the Minister of Returns and Communities was blocked by Deputy Prime Minister Kuci from convening a similar donor meeting. In the meantime, several media outlets, including the BBC and Australian television, have done stories on the camp residents publicizing their circumstances abroad. ¶7. (SBU) International NGO activists have become involved in resettlement efforts as well. One group, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP),has criticized Mercy Corps and the RESTART program on the grounds that RESTART does not immediately close the camps or provide long term medical care to camp residents to combat the effects of lead poisoning. A STP representative recently told the Embassy and USAID that they have recorded almost 80 deaths in the camps since 1999, which they claimed resulted from lead poisoning. The activists claimed miscarriages are common and that some mothers, alarmed that many of their children are suffering from severe retardation as a result of lead poisoning, are aborting pregnancies rather than putting more children at risk. The group,s goal is the immediate evacuation of all 600 RAE camp residents from both Cesmin Lug and Osterode to a Western country where they could receive long term medical treatment. Although USAID,s RESTART program is the only existing donor program that will permanently resettle a third of the camp residents, the activists criticized it for not addressing the immediate medical needs of the Roma (while acknowledging that medical treatment would not be effective as long as Roma remained in the camps) and also viewed it as competing with their own efforts to evacuate camp residents to another country. However, western European countries, especially Germany, are deporting Kosovo RAE families back to Kosovo in growing numbers as their refugee asylum claims are rejected. Discussions with diplomatic contacts in Pristina indicate there is no interest in European capitals to reverse this trend, especially in favor of a large group of RAE families that would require expensive, long term medical care just as government budgets are squeezed from the international financial crisis. COMMENT ¶8. (SBU) The plight of the Roma camps is attracting increased public attention. Last week Thomas Hammarberg, the Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe, visited the camps and described the situation in Cesmin Lug and Osterode as a "human catastrophe" and called on the international community to provide medical treatment for camp residents. On March 30, STP and a NGO named the Kosovo Medical Emergency Group released a 67-page report chronicling the damage from lead poisoning to camp residents, health over the last decade and appealed to the international community to immediately evacuate the Roma abroad and provide them with medical treatment. USAID,s RESTART program, which was proposed in 2008 after a prior UNMIK-led effort to close the camps failed, does not provide for the immediate medical treatment of camp residents which STP advocates. Medical professionals, including from CDC, advise that the first step in treatment is removal of camp residents from the source of the contamination, and that long term chelation blood cleaning therapy to reduce BLL should only be performed if a patient is permanently removed from a lead infused environment. However, after nine years RESTART is the only donor program on the ground specifically focusing on the resettlement of a large portion of camp residents. USAID and the Embassy are working with officials in Pristina and PRISTINA 00000149 004 OF 004 Mitrovica and also the international community to galvanize support for a comprehensive solution that permanently closes both camps and provides the Roma with long term medical treatment and livelihood assistance. End Comment. KAIDANOW