Kosovo Lead Poisoning: A Tragic Timeline of Poisoned Neglect
09 September 2016
US attorney Dianne Post described the recent decision by the UN Advisory Panel as “the long-awaited morsel of justice for the hundreds of Kosovo Roma community members who were herded onto lead-poisoned land after the war in 1999 and then abandoned for ten years.”
UNMIK’s head of mission, Zahir Tanin expressed “regret regarding the adverse health conditions suffered by the complainants and their families at the IDP camps”. This perfunctory expression of ‘regret’ falls way short of the very public apology demanded by the panel; neither was there any commitment to compensate the victims.
In pursuit of justice the ERRC invites you to sign our petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. As the events were shrouded in official obfuscation, and underreported for over a decade, many people are understandably vague about the details, others simply unaware. Below is a timeline, culled from the ERRC archives and Human Rights Watch reporting, that provides a chronicle of tragic events that beggar belief.
TIMELINE
June 1999: On 10 June 1999, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 placing Kosovo under the authority of KFOR and UNMIK. KFOR was tasked with establishing “a secure environment in which refugees and displaced persons can return home in safety” and temporarily ensuring “public safety and order” until the international civil presence could take over responsibility for this task.
21 June 1999: On 21 June 1999, as the first KFOR troops and UNMIK personnel were deployed in Kosovo, the Mitrovica Roma Mahala was looted and burnt to the ground by Albanian mobs. The Mahala had comprised around 750 houses, with an estimated 8,000 inhabitants. All were forcibly expelled and the entire neighbourhood destroyed while the French KFOR3 stood idly by. Half the population fled to other countries, the remainder occupied several public buildings around northern Mitrovice.
September 1999 – June 2000: The IDP camps of Žitkovac, Česmin Lug and Kablare established in close proximity to the Trepca mining and smelting complex. Intended as a temporary measure (45-90 days) for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian IDPs, living conditions in these lead-contaminated sites were appalling resulting in frequent illnesses, and particularly hazardous for pregnant women and children.
14 August 2000: SRSG Bernard Kouchner orders the closure of the Trepca smelter: “The people of Mitrovica are at risk because of this smelter. As a doctor, as well as chief administrator of Kosovo, I would be derelict if I let this threat to the health of children and pregnant women continue for one more day. Recent tests indicate that current levels of lead exposure are approaching the most extreme in decades.” KFOR contingents implemented measures to protect their personnel, including removing personnel with high blood lead levels from the area, but not Roma IDPs.
November 2000: UNMIK commissioned a report “First Phase of Public Health Project on Lead Pollution in Mitrovica Region” which was not released to the public. Human Rights Watch (HRW) quoted from this report that in 2000 lead contamination in Mitrovica exceeded acceptable standards by 176 times in vegetation samples and by 122 times in the soil, with high concentrations of lead in dust. UNMIK did not make the report public: did not act on its recommendations; did not report the situation to the UN Security Council. UNMIK deliberately failed to provide information about the high levels of lead concentrations in the camp to the residents of the camps.
October 2001: UNMIK takes over responsibility for managing the camps from UNHCR. The IDPs had been there for two years.
May, June, and July 2004: Romani activists bring the first cases symptomatic of lead poisoning among the children living in the camps to the attention of the authorities and the media from early 2004. The death of a four-year-old girl in the Zhitkovc camp prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to conduct a health risk assessment during May, June and July 2004. Random blood and soil tests conducted by WHO showed that most children living in the IDP camps in Mitrovica and Zvečan had BLL above acceptable levels and that more than 80% of soils in the camps were “unsafe” because of lead contamination.
July-October 2004: The WHO warned about the chronic irreversible effects of lead on the human body and urged UNMIK to immediately evacuate children and pregnant women from the camps. Similar appeals were subsequently made by both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International, which publicly requested UNMIK to immediately evacuate the camps.
September 2004: Five years on, WHO releases a report demonstrating very high levels of lead contamination among the Roma population in all the camps.
January 2005: In January 2005, the WHO, UNICEF and the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), initiated a Blood Lead Surveillance Programme conducting periodic rounds of blood testing to monitor the BLLs of children living in the camps. The results of these tests were not made public.
11 July 2005: The Ombudsperson Institution in Kosovo described the living conditions in the camps of Žitkovac, Kablare and Česmin Lug as “appalling … marked by poverty, malnutrition and a lack of the most basic hygiene and health services.” It called on the authorities to evacuate the camps immediately as a separate measure from any plans to reconstruct the Roma Mahala.
September 2005: A local Roma activist, Argentina Gidzic, files a criminal complaint against unknown perpetrators in the Pristina court alleging a violation of article 291 of the Kosovo Provisional Criminal Code (which outlaws actions impacting the environment that endanger human life).
October 2005: The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of IDPs expresses his shock to see first-hand that the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian IDPs had been settled on “highly contaminated land” and appealed to the international community to immediately evacuate the camps.
19 October 2005: The Society for Threatened Peoples organized testing for toxic heavy metals in the three IDP camps near Mitrovica. Hair samples were collected from 48 children between the ages of 1-15. The readings range from 20 to 1200 µg/g while "normal" readings would be in the range 3 to15.
2 December 2005: The ERRC sent letters asking the United Nations Secretary General, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and four Special Rapporteurs to take immediate action for the preservation of the lives and health of children in three Romani IDP camps in Kosovo. The ERRC asked the Secretary-General Kofi Annan to rectify this human rights tragedy, and commence an internal investigation to ascertain how this dereliction of duty was allowed to continue for more than six years.
3 February 2006: The ERRC filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of Roma IDPs alleging violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The complaint was ruled inadmissible by the Court within weeks, on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction. Even though the court acknowledged that UNMIK was acting as “a government or "state" in Kosovo” which therefore granted it immunity, it called for “an examination of the application of immunity in terms of international human rights norms.”
13 February 2006: The ERRC filed a third party complaint under the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/52/247 in which the UN agrees to compensate those who have been injured in their missions.
5 March 2006: The ERRC filed a complaint with the UN Oversight Body requesting an investigation into the mismanagement of the IDP camps in Kosovo.
May 2006: Two apartment buildings (containing 48 flats) and 54 individual houses constructed on the Mahalla site in south Mitrovica as the first part of the reconstruction project.
June 2006: WHO facilitates the third blood testing on a group of around 50 children from the camps in Cesmin Lug, Osterode, and Leposavic. Zoran Savic, one of the local Serb doctors recalled: “In some analyses, lead levels went above the amount we could measure – these are some of the highest levels registered in the world”; and added that the unsanitary conditions in the camps were also a major factor in susceptibility to lead poisoning.
August 2006: WHO arranges the first of two distributions of oral chelation therapy to a group of about 40 children from the Osterode camp.
June 2007: The UNMIK-coordinated Mitrovica Action Team (MAT) organizes the return of 90 families to the Roma Mahalla from all the Mitrovica camps as well as from Serbia and Montenegro.
May 2008: UNMIK hands over management of the Cesmin Lug and Osterode camps to the Kosovo Ministry of Communities and Returns.
July 2008: A complaint is filed by a Roma rights activist on behalf of Roma families from all the camps with the Human Rights Advisory Panel alleging criminal negligence leading to severe environmental contamination causing a severe health hazard to the camps’ inhabitants, as well as violation of the rights to life and family life, and lack of a legal remedy.
2008: The case was again brought up before the Human Rights Advisory Panel of UNMIK in 2008 by a group of 138 members of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities in Kosovo who were initially placed in three IDP camps.
October 2008: Mitrovica Institute for Health conducted blood tests on children in Cesmin Lug, Osterode, and Leposavic. Out of 53 tested, 21 had life-threatening blood lead levels requiring immediate medical intervention and only two children had results within the norm.
January 2009: WHO visits Kosovo and publicly called for the closure of the Osterode and Cesmin Lug camps.
5 June 2009: The Human Rights Advisory Panel rules the Roma claim to be admissible on multiple counts, including in relation to allegations of violations of the right to life, the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, respect for private and family life, the prohibition against discrimination in general, the prohibition of discrimination against women, and the rights of children.
25 October 2010: Balkan Insight reported that the camps were finally closed after ten years with several organisations claiming credit for the move. UNMIK actually had the front to issue a press statement claiming that it “has demolished a controversial settlement inhabited by uprooted members of the Roma community, which was contaminated with lead from a nearby plant.” Four days later, a press release from the European Commission Liaison Office in Kosovo stated that a “joint EU and USAID effort had brought Cesmin Lug camp in north Mitrovica to a successful closure.”
