The mission, which occupies a building on the outskirts of Pristina, is currently led by an Afghan diplomat, Zahir Tanin. Ruecker was the last of the UN secretary-general’s special representatives for Kosovo to wield significant power, because four months after the declaration of independence, Kosovo’s constitution entered into force, consigning UNMIK to the periphery of developments.
“It was a threefold challenge derived from Resolution 1244: the governance role – to provide an interim administration, the peacekeeping role – to reach out to all communities and the status process role – to facilitate the process, while not conducting it,” he explained.
Ruecker insisted that UNMIK did well in laying the foundations of a rule-of-law-based democracy and a functioning market economy. I would say the legacy is mixed, not a failure,” German diplomat Joachim Ruecker, who led UNMIK at the time Kosovo declared independence, told BIRN. “UNMIK has achieved what was achievable under its mandate, maybe even more. UNMIK has been widely criticised in Kosovo for its perceived failings, although those who led the mission believe that it did what it could according to the mandate under which it was deployed. Security was left in the hands of the NATO peacekeeping mission, KFOR.įor eight years until the declaration of independence, Kosovo’s people were the only nation in the world to have UN passports, a document which offered very limited possibilities for travel abroad. UNMIK had four main ‘pillars’, or areas of control – the justice system, the public administration, democratisation (under OSCE mission supervision), and the economy. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the head of UNMIK, Michael Steiner, meet ethnic Albanian women holding pictures of missing persons at a protest rally in front of the UNMIK building in Pristina, 2002. The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, issued in 2010, said that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate Resolution 1244 because the Security Council edict did not specify Kosovo’s final status. “Paradoxically, the UN keeps in force a resolution which still artificially recognises the ‘sovereignty’ of Serbia over Kosovo, while another UN body, the International Court of Justice, has contested this resolution with its opinion from 2010,” Reka told BIRN. Russia, which holds a UN Security Council veto, backed its Serbian allies.īlerim Reka, a professor of international law, argued that UNMIK’s mission was complete the day Kosovo declared independence on February 17, 2008, but a lack of unanimity among Security Council members meant it remained on the ground, despite its lack of powers. Her call was welcomed in Pristina, which sees UNMIK as a relic of the time when internationals had the final say on everything in Kosovo, but it angered officials in Belgrade, who argued that this would leave Kosovo Serbs unprotected. Haley cited “repeated statements by the majority of Security Council members that UNMIK has long fulfilled its mandate”. Now its future is again up for debate after the outgoing US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, asked in October for it to be withdrawn from Kosovo, arguing that its work was complete.
Opinions vary, however, about how successful it was in achieving these goals.Īlmost 20 years after the mission was deployed and a decade after it handed over most of its functions following Kosovo’s declaration of independence and the deployment of the EU’s rule-of-law mission EULEX, UNMIK’s day-to-day responsibilities are now relatively minor. UNMIK, a civilian mission, was in charge of the provisional administration of Kosovo with a mandate to “ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal life for all inhabitants”. It was established on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which was passed in June 1999. The UN deployed its Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, after the NATO air strikes which ended Belgrade’s control over Kosovo.
After three Serbs, one of them a four-year-old child, were murdered in a village near the eastern Kosovo town of Gjilan/Gnjilane in May 2000, the recently-established United Nations mission in Kosovo intervened in the work of the country’s judiciary for the first time.Īn executive order signed by the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Kosovo prolonged the detention of the murder suspect, who was held in custody for more than two years before being released because of a lack of evidence.įrom that point on, and for the next eight years, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, better known locally as UNMIK, loomed large over events in the country which had just broken away from Belgrade’s rule.