The situation of the Kosovo Roma was largely ignored, or seen as a matter of immigration to western Europe, until the case of the Roma schoolgirl deported from France hit the headlines.

The absurd and tragic case of Leonarda Dibrani, the 15-year-old Roma schoolgirl who was deported from France on 9 October, has put Kosovo back in the news. The French government claims that Kosovo is “safe”; that means illegal immigrants may be repatriated there. However, the Roma community in Kosovo is completely marginalised and the victim of repeated violent attacks.

When Leonarda arrived in Mitrovica, she explained she did not speak Albanian and had “never even heard of Kosovo”; this led to wild speculation about her parents’ complicated trajectory that failed to mention a fundamental issue — the Dibrani family are stateless. Leonarda Dibrani’s father was born in Kosovo but apparently left for Italy at an early age, where he later met his wife, also a Balkan Roma. Behind the administrative muddle, this case provides us with a glimpse of the reality endured by the thousands of people who were forced onto the roads of Europe by the wars of the 1990s and obliged to reinvent their social identity to survive.

From that point of view, there is nothing exceptional about young Leonarda’s fate. In the 1990s, many Kosovo Roma applied for asylum in western European countries, describing themselves as “persecuted Albanians”. Today they have been repatriated in vast numbers to a country with which they have no ties. And their children, born in Sweden, France or Germany, don’t speak Albanian, the main language.

When Kosovo was an Autonomous Province in the former Yugoslavia, some 100,000-150,000 Roma lived there, accounting for 5-10% of the total population. It was even a pioneer in implementing the Communist government’s integration policy. The Romany language was taught in schools, and the first ever Romany radio and TV programmes were produced in Prizren, and later Pristina.

The situation deteriorated in the 1990s when the confrontations between the Albanian majority in Kosovo and the regime in Belgrade escalated. The Roma were told to choose between the two rival nationalist camps, and since the country’s economic situation was rapidly deteriorating, many attempted to flee abroad. Those who stayed behind had to steer a delicate course between the rival camps in order to survive. When Albanians were fired from public service jobs, or resigned massively in response to the repression in Kosovo, many Roma took their place. When the war ended, they were collectively accused of “collaborating” with Slobodan Milošević’s Serbian regime, providing a pretext for the numerous abuses to which the Roma were subjected during the terrible summer of 1999.

The Roma neighbourhoods of most Kosovar towns were systematically plundered and burnt down before the very eyes of the NATO forces deployed there; their inhabitants were obliged to flee to neighbouring countries such as Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, where many still live in collective refugee centres. Dozens were murdered; others were deported to Albania (1). Since those tragic events, only 30,000 Roma are thought to remain in Kosovo, living under very precarious economic circumstances. They are denied access to most public service jobs and can no longer carry out their traditional artisanal work. One of the rare exceptions is the town of Prizren, which has a population of about 6,000 Roma (compared with 9,000 before the war). But many of the Roma chased out of the major cities are crammed into Serb enclaves, especially in central Kosovo.

In June 1999, Albanian extremists destroyed the Roma mahala (neighbourhood) in Mitrovica on the south bank of the Ibar river, which has a majority Albanian population. It has since been rebuilt, largely thanks to European Union funds, but its former inhabitants have not returned. The dire economic situation in Mitrovica, and the persistent racist atmosphere, do not make returning an attractive proposition, and people who have been sent back try by all possible means to leave again, even if it was once their home town.

Since 1999 and the establishment of the International Protectorate, massive sums (albeit difficult to quantify) have been devoted to the Kosovo Roma. The EU and its member states, together with national aid agencies in Switzerland and Norway, and private organisations such as the Open Society Foundations (OSF) have spent lavishly, but have failed to integrate the Roma community or even to develop any economic activity. In fact they have mainly stoked the budgets of a number of organisations which are well aware that any project targeting the Roma has a good chance of obtaining funding, without any real need to show results. The assessment criteria are a mere formality to satisfy the sponsors’ requirements and the results do not greatly improve the lot of the Roma communities.

The donors, for their part, believe that their financial efforts justify the repatriation of any Kosovo Roma who fail to obtain asylum in western Europe. Since Kosovo declared itself independent on 17 February 2008, it has signed Readmission Agreements with all the western European countries whereby it accepts forced returns — even for families who no longer have any ties with Kosovo and have no property there.

The so-called “New Kosovo” claims to be a multi-ethnic society with quota mechanisms to ensure that the various minorities — such as the Roma, Turks, Bosnians and Gorani — are fairly represented. But as preparations for the local elections on 3 November have shown, all the international pressure is focused on the “integration” of the Serbs into Kosovar institutions, whether the enclaves or north Mitrovica. Under those conditions, the fate of the Kosovo Roma remains an insignificant “adjustment variable” — except when it’s a matter of immigration to western Europe.