What does human security mean in Kosovo?

This is a great question and it has been a topic of concern since the end of the war in 1999. I attended a pseudo-conference at al-Gërmia restaurant in Gërmia Park, that was held by a student group associated with the London School of Economics (LSE) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (who will fund the final report). The UNDP has its own webpage on Kosovo you can find here. As background, groups of two students where given a municipality in Kosovo and interviewed officials, professionals, and civilians on the security situation in Kosovo.

There was no concrete definition given to human security, which in a way is a problem because human security encompasses many things from physical security to economic opportunity. The topic of human security has been on the rise in the international affairs spectrum, with discussions focusing more on the individual rather than just the state as a whole. In the case of Kosovo, the LSE group concluded that job creation and transitional justice were the main concerns of the Kosovar population that was interviewed (unfortunately I do not know the statistics of the study). Some interviewees stated that they were insecure with the institutions in Kosovo, meaning the government and other organizations that are supposed to be developing Kosovo into a solid economy (this of course is hard due to current times). And actually Kosovo has a large informal or "grey" market, not outright black market, but things like people working under the table and shop keepers not having all legal authorization to commence business. There are also considerable "street" vendors that sell products, with cellphones, cigarettes, and phone cards popular items (as a side note, many people smoke cigarettes here, and while at a cafe or restaurant, people will walk around trying to sell cigarettes to you directly, it's a nice service if your a smoker.).

Other issues that came up in the interviews were the corruption that the government of Kosovo is currently dealing with, inefficient rule of law, and the fear of "complaining" to law officials as a means of pursuing justice to crimes. The latter is interesting because most interviewees want the noise about crime and corruption to reach a higher level in the hopes that someone will doing something about it; at the same time, they are scared to voice their own opinions for fear of retaliation or loss of personal benefits, i.e. job, access to services, etc.

I must reiterate that I do not know how many people were interviewed, how everyone responded, what questions were asked, the makeup of the interviewees, etc, etc, and that this report by the LSE is not indicative of the entire Kosovar population; however the conference was good insight into the ground level perception of human security in Kosovo.

The conference also tried to draw up some solutions for these problems. Mainly accountability on all levels is the number one policy recommendation, most likely through the use of a watchdog organization. Or this watchdog could be civil society as a whole, which would help to strengthen civil society as it is perceived to be weak in Kosovo at this time. Another option is decentralization of the Kosovar government in municipalities, meaning breaking up bigger municipalities into smaller municipalities and trying to bring local governance into the hands of the people (The International Civilian Office focuses on decentralization in Kosovo). The Kosovo government also needs to create more jobs and perhaps some sort of micro-financing for small start-up businesses needs to be put in place. On international trade, tariffs and taxes needs to be placed on imports because right now Kosovo has a few free trade agreements with its trading partners and does not make any money in this sense. (Serbia is not taxed on its imports to Kosovo not because of a free trade agreement but because it doesn't recognize Kosovo and still has a hand in parts of Kosovo).

I think the LSE and UNDP will publish this report at the end of the year and I will try to update this post when I receive any other information on this. If interested, there are many great organizations that focus on security in Kosovo other than the UNDP, such as Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, KIPRED, KDI, and IKS to name a few.