CRS History in Kosovo

Kosovo has been under United Nations and NATO administration since a 78-day NATO-led air war that halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999. In April 2007, United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari recommended that Kosovo be granted internationally supervised independence — a proposal strongly supported by the province's ethnic Albanians, the United States and the European Union, but opposed by Serbia and Russia.

Catholic Relief Services began its operations in Kosovo in 1994, prior to the full-scale conflict. When conflict came in 1999, CRS managed refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania that accommodated the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from the fighting. Within a day of the signing of the cease-fire agreement in early June 1999, CRS returned to Kosovo along with the returning refugees to find a society largely destroyed and deeply divided along ethnic lines. With its worldwide reputation for emergency relief, CRS obtained significant financial support to help address immediate humanitarian needs. At the height of the emergency response, CRS had more than 400 staff in Kosovo.

While CRS primarily focused on food, shelter and medical care for those returning, it simultaneously began to develop a strategy for rebuilding a more just society in the wake of the conflict. A program to promote peaceful cooperation between Albanians and Serbs began in 2001, which, along with continued education efforts, forms the core of current CRS programming.

CRS’ programming in Kosovo focuses on parents, teachers, youth and community leaders, helping them deal with the social injustices that can create conflict.

Starting in 2002, CRS has brought Parent-Teacher Associations together with government officials to improve Kosovo's schools, and to tackle other social problems as well. In its counter-trafficking programming, CRS seeks to prevent young people from being forced into the sex trade, and helping the victims of trafficking. Through the Partnership Against Trafficking in Human Beings (PATH), CRS has helped create a program to monitor the government's effectiveness in combating the sex trade. PATH has organized roundtable discussions among experts such as police, public officials and others to address the problem.

CRS' peacebuilding programming brings together ethnically divided communities around common issues. Since CRS began this type of programming after the 1999 crisis, the agency has increased participation in many places in Kosovo, restoring trust and hope to divided Albanian-Serb communities and bridging the ethnic and religious divide.