The United Nations warned international donors today that efforts to help people return to their pre-war homes in the Balkans could be scuppered unless they kept funds flowing.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Ruud Lubbers, said projects to enable ethnic Serbs and Romas to return to Kosovo and Croatia, in a bid to create a multi-ethnic society, would stop at the end of next month if his agency did not receive $4 million by mid-July.
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Mr Lubbers was speaking as he chaired a one-day meeting of the Humanitarian Issues Working Group, a body of government and international organisation officials which guide UNHCR efforts in the Balkans.
Mr Michael Steiner, head of Kosovo's UN administration, said the number of returns to Kosovo was still small but progress was being made and donors should fork out now to keep the momentum. The UNCHR says more than a million people remain uprooted in the region.
"It would be hypocritical of the international community, under pressure to help in other more visible crises, to abandon the Balkans, and Kosovo in particular, just as it was making headway in its aim of becoming a multi-ethnic society," he said.
"The international community, in the beauty contest of international crises, is looking at Afghanistan and the Middle East and is saying we're not ready to support these efforts anymore," Mr Steiner said.
Mr Lubbers said his agency still faced a shortfall of almost $39 million this year for its Balkan operations and had decided that the Kosovo and Croatian operations would face the axe if emergency funding was not forthcoming.
The UNHCR estimates that over the past two years, 159,000 people have gone back to live in areas where they are now a minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another 150,000 have returned to their homes in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and 93,000 Croatian Serbs are back in Croatia.
Some 1,000 people from ethnic minorities have returned to Kosovo so far this year, bringing the total to around 4,200.