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The presentation of the report in Belgrade. Photo: BIRN.

The Serbian Commissariat for Refugees on Monday presented a report on the living conditions of refugees from Kosovo in Serbia which said that some 68,500 out of almost 200,000 are socially vulnerable.

Deputy commissioner Svetlana Velimirovic told media in Belgrade that these refugees are considered to be “in need”, meaning they struggle with poor housing and unemployment or have little to no income.

“The job of the Commissariat is to monitor the needs [of displaced people] in order to better use the limited funds available to us,” Velimirovic said.

The report was produced with the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. One of its authors, Ivana Anic Curko from the Commissariat for Refugees, said that with the institution’s limited budget it would take 55 years to solve the problems of the 68,500 displaced people from Kosovo who are in need.

According to the report, 76.7 per cent of the displaced people are Serbs while 14.9 per cent, just over 10,000, are Roma, followed by Montenegrins, Bosniaks/Muslims and Gorani “in far lower percentages”.

The Serbian government considers all of them to be internally displaced people rather than refugees, as it does not recognise Kosovo’s independence.

Almost one third are unemployed, while the total monthly income of more than 75 per cent of households is below 300 euros. The average monthly household income is only 169 euros.

Almost 50 per cent of the displaced people in need rent or live with relatives, while some 5,500 families own property not suitable for housing, the report says.

More than half of the displaced persons in need (56.5 per cent) said that their property in Kosovo has been destroyed, while 11.25 per cent said that it was damaged but uninhabitable. Only seven per cent said that they consider returning.

“The number of returns [to Kosovo] has been very small, and continues to shrink, which means that we have to intensify our efforts,” said the UN refugee agency’s representative in Serbia, Hans Friedrich Schoder.

Schoder said that a lot has been done in recent years to close the temporary ‘collective centres’ that have housed refugees in Serbia, but there is still more to be done.

“We hope that soon every last one of these collective centres will be closed, because there are still some very vulnerable Roma displaced families there who urgently need better housing,” Schoder said.

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