The technical dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia started in 2011 and resulted in 33 agreements. The agreements impacted various areas of people’s lives, including freedom of movement, civil registries, cadastral records, customs, local governance in the north, recognition of diplomas, regional cooperation, energy, telecommunication, justice, etc. Improving the lives of citizens and cooperation between them was one of the key priorities of the dialogue.

Intellect and language are the most meaningful advantages of the human race.  Language is the most perfect agent of communication and indeed understanding.   Inter-cultural communication depends on practical and formal opportunities for people to express their opinions, feelings, desires, outlooks and aspirations.  Spiritual life and the thought process would, without language, be rendered meaningless.  Language, and later the written word, was created and further developed by unbroken cultural communication.  In the processes of daily globalization, languages acts as a promoter of humanity’s inter-cultural and trans-cultural advancement wherever the freedom of expression and writing is practically and formally respected.  Borders between nations and countries are gradually becoming more and more blurred, or being erased altogether.  Following freedom of speech, freedom of movement follows as one of the most essential rights afforded to man.  Because of that, the necessity of studying a foreign language ever more important, because language influences intellectual development and the exchange of ideas and experiences: It facilitates the transfer of old ideas and creates new ones.

In the aftermath of conflict, Kosovo adapted institutional mechanisms for the integration of its minority population through the creation a wholly new system of governance.  The principle of citizenship is accentuated by the Ahtisaari plan, without the prominence of any one ethnic group. This new social framework is presented as a symbolic assemblage of various ethnic communities who at the same time maintain and nurture their uniqueness.   At the center of an endeavor on the part certain ethnic groups to maintain their identity is the institutional protection of language(s) that their members speak.  The constitution of Kosovo and the Law on the Use of Languages (2006) offer robust safeguards for this right.  Kosovo is defined as a political system under which both the Albanian and the Serbian languages enjoy equal status as official languages (Article I.)  Likewise, minority communities who make up at least 5% of the total population in a given area are granted the right for their language to be in official usage at the municipal level, with the exception of the Turkish language in Prizren that enjoys that prominence regardless of the actual size of Turkish population (Article 2.)  Languages of communities that make up more than 3% of the population of a municipality are granted the right to official use and parity with official languages (Article 2.)

Confidence in the dialogue, which was initiated with the Brussels Agreement in 2013, and led under the auspices of the EU, has been lost due to internal political constraints and the needs of the two sides, but also due to inertia and the disengagement of the world capitals. The collapse of multilateralism accompanied with weakness of diplomacy has only strengthened the amplitude of misunderstanding and has threatened with a new frozen conflict in Europe.

On 6 March representatives of the KSC, Silke Studzinsky, Head of Victims' Participation Office, and Avis Benes, Head of Public Information and Communication Unit, met with several NGOs at the Civic Energy Centre in Mitrovica North. Find the news here

Source: Pristina Insight

Source: KoSSev