COMMISSION ON HOUSING AND PROPERTY RIGHTS SEEN AS WAY TO MEET CHALLENGE OF DOCUMENTS DESTROYED OR MISSING IN KOSOVO
Press Release
HAB/156
UNEP/42
COMMISSION ON HOUSING AND PROPERTY RIGHTS SEEN AS WAY TO MEET CHALLENGE OF DOCUMENTS DESTROYED OR MISSING IN KOSOVO
19990818Workshop in Pristina Reviews Prospects; Senior United Nations Officials Are Concerned at Security of Tenure for Returning Refugees
NAIROBI, 18 August (UNEP/HABITAT) -- As part of the joint Balkans Task Force of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), a four-day workshop organized by Habitat is taking place in Pristina to consider the creation of an independent Commission on Housing and Property Rights under the auspices of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
"Housing rights and urban governance are emerging as some of the key issues upon which the future stability of Kosovo will depend", said Klaus Toepfer, Acting Executive Director of Habitat and Executive Director of UNEP. "Despite the massive scale of destruction, the problem of reconstruction involves more than just rebuilding damaged and destroyed houses."
For over a decade, legislation prevented Albanians from buying their own home. To overcome this form of apartheid, where a Serb could not sell a house to an Albanian, many individuals made informal arrangements of ownership. Such arrangements now make the task of tracing and verifying ownership of properties difficult. An additional problem is that there are no comprehensive records of land and property rights, as a large part of the original records of that kind has been either destroyed or removed from Kosovo.
Without proper records and legally recognized structures of urban governance, ethnic conflict is likely to be exacerbated, especially as disputes about illegally occupied land and property are difficult to resolve. This means that successful reconstruction and rehabilitation depends, among other things, on the formation of an independent commission on housing and property rights. Mechanisms must also be established for mapping and re- creating land registration and titling systems.
- 2 - Press Release HAB/156 UNEP/42 18 August 1999
In that connection, Mr. Toepfer is to travel to Pristina on Friday, 20 August, to meet with Bernard Kouchner, Senior Representative of the Secretary-General for UNMIK, to discuss ways of ensuring security of tenure for returning refugees, capacity-building for better urban governance and the proposed independent commission on housing and property rights.
For more information, please look at the Task Force website: www.grid.unep.ch/btf; or contact for UNEP, Tore J. Brevik, UNEP Spokesman, Tel: 254-2-6232, fax: 623692; e-mail: brevikt@unep.org; or Robert Bisset, BTF Press Officer, mobile: 41-(0)-79-206-3720, e-mail: rbisset@rocketmail.com; for UNCHS, Sharad Shankardass, Acting Head, Media and Press Relations, UNCHS (Habitat) Tel: 254-2-623153, fax: 624060; e-mail: shankars@unchs.org; or John Hogan, Programme Officer, UNCHS (Habitat), Pristina, Kosovo, mobile: 41-(0)-79-221-8240.
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