UNMIK/PR/1491
PRISTINA – Principal Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Kosovo (PDSRSG) Larry Rossin today met with Dr. Marc Danzon, the Regional Director for Europe of the World Health Organisation (WHO), accompanied by his senior advisors. The focus of their discussion was to identify ways to reinforce collaboration between UNMIK, WHO and other organisations currently engaged intensively in a joint effort to create better options for the displaced Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian people currently living in the lead contaminated camps in the north of Kosovo.
Jointly addressing the media following the meeting, Mr. Rossin and Dr. Danzon called on the residents of these camps to immediately relocate to the safer environment of Camp Osterode as an emergency health requirement. Mr. Rossin stressed that Camp Osterode “is an interim solution, it is not a permanent solution. The health situation for all of the residents, particularly the young children in the camps, is intolerable and really one of the worst health crises that we have in this part of Europe.”
“It is very important that these people vacate the camps as quickly as possible. It is particularly important for infants, for young children and for pregnant women and mothers who are breast feeding,” Mr. Rossin said. “UNMIK and the World Health Organisation together are committed to providing therapy for the children who do have blood levels of lead that are too high; after that therapy takes place, the children cannot return to camps in which they would again be exposed to pollution. Camp Osterode provides a facility that is clean, where they would be able to convalesce properly from the treatment that they would have, and be able to have a healthy life,” he added.
Mr. Rossin emphasized the temporary nature of the solution offered by Camp Osterode to the health emergency facing the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian residents of the camps, and stressed the right of these displaced persons to return to their permanent homes in the Roma Mahalla, destroyed during the conflict in 1999. He said: “It is a moral and a political commitment, it should be of Kosovo and it is of the international community, to eventually allow those people to return to their permanent homes.”
