medienhilfe: Kosov@

Kosovo is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian government and Kosovo's Albanian population. International negotiations began in 2006, to determine the final status of Kosovo.

The process was led by UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, who presented his plan to Kosovo Albanian and Serb authorities in Pristina and Belgrade in February 2007. The draft proposes 'supervised independence' for the province. From early July 2007 a draft resolution, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty.

Serbia insists that UNSCR 1244, which envisioned a UN-facilitated political process to determine status, precludes independence through a preamble reference to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia.

In December 2007, anonymous EU officials revealed a plan by Slovenia for Kosovo's independence. The plan had Kosovo declaring independence in February of 2008, after Serbia's presidential elections. Kosovo was then to be recognized by Britain, France, Italy, and Germany followed by the U.S., other European nations, and nations from the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Kosovo president declared then that Kosovo was "a few days away" from independence, though he did not specify a date.

On 17 November, elections were successfully held for: the Assembly of Kosovo; 30 municipal assemblies; and the new position of mayor for each of the 30 municipalities. The elections were organized under UNMIK’s authority by Kosovo’s Central Election Commission, in close cooperation with the OSCE. Kosovo has now successfully held five sets of elections since UNMIK was established.

The low participation of Kosovo Serbs in the elections was regrettable. The elections highlighted, once again, that many members of the Kosovo Serb community, particularly those living in northern Kosovo, do not feel represented by Kosovo’s Provisional Institutions. They continue, instead, to depend on parallel structures for the provision of basic services, which are supported by the authorities in Belgrade.

The economic situation did not change compared with previous years. Huge percentage of population is formally unemployed and only small number of people work in small illegally constructed objects or improvised street market places.

Strikes and demonstrations protesting against poor living conditions, unemployment and education problems increased significantly in October and November.

Kosovo has 114 licensed broadcasters: 93 radio stations and 21 television stations. They are subject to the regulation by the IMC in accordance with the Law on the Independent Media Commission and Broadcasting. Also, in Kosovo dozens of print media outlets exist.

Considering the fact that Kosovo’s population counts only 2 Mio population and its economy is extremely weak, it is obvious that these are too many media outlets and that there is no possibility for all of them to survive without financial support. Most of the stations have no journalists, no news program and are mainly commercially oriented. Research journalism almost doesn’t exist; the biggest obstacle for this is insufficient salary and fear from political and mafia clamp-downs. The economic, but also professional situation of the media, especially of the electronic ones, is desperate. More than half of today’s media outlets are not able to exist without international support, yet are in deficit, and only 41% of all people working in the media business have working experience. Albanian mainstream media still don’t think its their responsibility to reflect the province’s multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. Minority media or minority programs on the mainstream media on the other hand, still face huge problems of recognition and significant financial difficulties. Journalists of minority programs complain about the security situation and the fact that they are not given all the information they ask for.

According to the IMC Law, The Commission is the only authority in the territory of Kosovo responsible for managing, regulating, and assigning resources of the Broadcast Frequency Spectrum, issuance of licenses and collection of duties for usage of broadcasting frequencies. The application process for re-licensing ended on March 5, 2007. It enabled all interested parties to apply for a broadcast license for radio or television for a specific location where a frequency is available. As they announced no new request for a broadcast license were considered. However, considering the importance of providing all communities living in Kosovo an opportunity to have access to broadcasting in their own languages, the Council of IMC has decided to make one exception, in order to accept new applications for a radio station in Roma language for the town of Prizren.

Achievements:

Cross-ethnic Radio Programming – CerpiK

The structure that was established (Board of Directors, management, editorial team), provides more pro-active role of the participating stations. It strengthens the stations' higher level of commitment on a longer-run

CerpiK is at the moment the only inter-ethnic media project that addresses the society at large. Apart of some NGO-like publications, there are no media outlets in a proper sense that gather editors and journalists of various ethnic background to produce common programs. Couple of attempts similar to CerpiK, like the projects initiated by Deutsche Welle and the Finish Office in Pristina, seized to exist. Thus, the CerpiK is not the leading, but the only program that provides opinions and views of Kosovo's different communities about important issues, and therewith serves as a platform for dialogue.

Precise audience data are missing, as the audience surveys on local level are not done in Kosovo; based on alternative audience checking (call ins; checking of audience on frequent public places such as markets, restaurants, coffee shops; reactions sent to the stations), we can say that the program has been increasingly well accepted in Prizren, Peja, Kosovo Polje and, very importantly, in 2007 in Mitrovica as well;

Though visible improvements in editorial and journalistic professional level have been achieved, investigative journalism approach is not yet dominant. This highest level of professional performance requires continued training of the same journalists. Unfortunately, most of the journalists trained in the last 2-3 years meanwhile left the CerpiK stations, which hampered achievement of this objective. However, approach to follow up on same topics of the highest importance has delivered good results and will be in the next step accompanied with radio campaigns and concrete activities in the local communities (pro-active approach of “community radio in your service”);

No achievements have been reached in regard to the project self-sustainability; the stations still have to develop and implement self-sustainability strategy and plan.

Minority productions: Minority radio stations and minority language programs on Albanian radio stations

In general, all stations supported increased quality of productions in regard to concept, topics, content and technical aspects

All stations broadcasted their news and information program regularly and no negative development of the program scope or quality occurred, in spite of unfriendly political or economical environment

In-house-productions at Radio Contact Plus and Radio Peja increased and the quality was significantly improved as well (mh’s assessment reports completely match to those done by the international trainers and consultants who were engaged by other organizations to work with the stations);

Regarding the level of self-sustainability reached, the achievements

are mixed. While Radio Peja faced negative trends, Radio Contact Plus

and Radio K managed to increase their revenue. Yet, both stations

manage to cover only 1/3 (Radio K) or merely 10% (Radio Contacts) of their overall costs. Lot of work with trainers from marketing and sales is needed in 2008.

Radio Contact Plus and Radio Peja have shown an increase of audience (though there are no official audience ratings, the stations have own polls, increased contacts with the listeners and increased sms messages)

The yearlong support starts showing positive effects regarding Radio Contact Plus and Radio K: These media outlets show an obvious improvement in regard to program quality and management during the last year. mh's consultants from our Expert Pool will continue intensive capacity building in 2008.

Radio Contact Plus has become a regular source of information quoted in UNMIK and OSCE press monitoring reports. It also got more frequently quoted in the media in Serbia, who obviously found in Contact Plus a reliable and professional information provider on developments in northern Kosovo.

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