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Ministers’ Deputies
CM Documents
CM(2002)178 Appendix 3 6 November 2002
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820 Meeting, 5 December 2002
7 Education, Culture
7.1 Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research (CD-ESR)
Report to the Council of Europe (COE) on the development of education and science in Kosovo 1999-2002
Michael Daxner
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1. Introduction
Kosovo is today a small and dynamic territory on its way towards a civil society in the heart of Europe. The mandate, given to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) through the Security Council Resolution 1244, has proven to be a successful approach, which started under difficult circumstances by implementing the concept of ‘Peacekeeping through Administration’, and has by now reached a stage of ‘Peace building by Development’. Kosovo is still a post-war society, at the same time. Diachronic developments of many speeds slow down or even endanger the progress that has been made so far. While infrastructure and economy develop steadily, however slowly, the building of a civil society with enough republican spirit to take responsibility for a fully developed democracy takes its time. Among all sectors of society, education and judiciary are the most sensitive. They were the core of ideological struggles in the past, they embedded the most atrocious acts of physical and mental deprivation and aggression, and they are the big hope for a turn to the better. While corruption, politically motivated or simply organised crime and a certain reluctance to internalise the rules of the new Europe are the major obstacles of a sustainable development, the most astounding and motivating phenomenon is the readiness to learn and to improve the situation through education. It is in this field where the author locates the major impact by the Council of Europe (CoE), and he is proud of his privilege to cooperate with the Council of Europe from the very beginning of his tenure in Kosovo.
2. Thanks and Appreciation
The author wants to thank the Council of Europe in its entirety for the immense support and assistance to education in Kosovo. The tasks of UNMIK and the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) were strongly supported by the Secretariat General, the Directorate of Education and the Office of the Council of Europe on site, both in Pristina and Belgrade. The cooperation was very close and trusting from the beginning, as the progress reports from the Council of Europe and its implementation into the ranks of ‘Lead Agencies’ clearly demonstrate. The author’s thanks shall be extended to colleagues from all levels and to the
external experts engaged for the common programs: Walter Schwimmer, Klaus Schumann, Verena Taylor, Gabriele Mazza, Sarah Keating, Maggie Nicholson, Karin Völkner, Sjur Bergan, James Wimberley, David Crosier, Villano Qiriazi shall be mentioned, and the whole Bureau and Secretariat, and scope of experts. The list could be extended easily.
It was the author’s privilege to include the Council of Europe, through the Divisions of Higher Education and Technical Assistance, into the World Bank Program for Kosovo Education, and thus to contribute to the stabilisation of the Council of Europe as a major player in another important sector of society building in Kosovo.
3. Structure of the Report
This report will not repeat any of the statements included into the diverse progress reports and other summaries as presented by Council of Europe staff and experts. The following overview is intended to wrap up the status of education and higher education in Kosovo under three special aspects:
· to provide a political assessment in one of the key sectors of society building,
· to discuss the role of the Council of Europe and other inter-governmental agencies in the political context,
· to add to a lessons-learned approach and draw some conclusions for the region.
For better understanding, readers are advised to recapitulate the Council of Europe reports on progress in their programs for Kosovo, and especially the major documents provided by the Department of Education and the Ministry.
4. The Laws on Education and Higher Education
The Assembly of Kosovo adopted two laws on education (General Education and Higher Education) during its first session in Spring 2002. The drafts were written by experts from within the Council of Europe and external advisors of high profile. It should be mentioned that both laws are discussed as models for the whole region of South-East Europe (SEE) and provide an example for European Standards. In so far, this is a story of success, and should motivate the Council of Europe to gain even more self-attainment in all matters of Education.
Education was far ahead of other Departments in preparing the laws because of its strict application of the Lead Agency concept; the Council of Europe, as a sub-contractor of the World Bank, was an ideal Lead Agency. It could coordinate all activities in the environment of drafting legislation, it had enough moral and political authority to represent European Standards, and it understood the pivotal function of the regional approach as opposed to single-system (Kosovo) strategy.
Some obstacles should be mentioned, though:
· The drafts were finished by October 2000, as demanded by the Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) and his Deputy for Civil Administration (DSRSG). They were approved by New York and should have been signed before the first general elections. Due to delays caused only by UNMIK, this time-window remained unused, and after the signing of the Common Document with the Serbs, the SRSG would no longer sign the laws. This caused a delay of almost one school year and weakened the position of education considerably.
· The PISG Minister could only be convinced after intense negotiations to accept the draft in a version which would respect the principles of the Council of Europe and the European Standards, as drafted. The lesson learned from this is that legislation will need sustained imbedding into monitoring (like through the Bologna Magna Charta Observatory in Higher Education) and follow-up on the implementation level.
· Against the advice of the International Head of the DES, the Constitutional Framework Law (CFL) destined all of education and higher education to become fully ‘transferred’, which implied that no ‘reserved’ power would remain with the SRSG; this fact caused quite a few problems with regards to align the laws with the demands from minority (‘Community’) protection clauses in the CFL (Art.4).
The Higher Education Law still excludes the University of Mitrovica (North Kosovo University), despite the fact that a high-level mediation upon claims from the Serb community has taken place. The lack of reserved powers will be one of the major obstacles for the future development of the entire education system in general, and to the Serbian claims on institutional level and with regard to curriculum in special.
· The Minister has in mind to ask the Council of Europe for supporting the implementation of the laws, but until now the conditions for such support are not clear at all; it will be an important task for the Council of Europe to determine under which circumstances the MEST will be granted further support, and which policies by the Minister will stand against that assistance.
5. Impact of the Council of Europe membership
On another level, the situation is more complicated. As is well known, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) has signed the Cultural Convention through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001, and is at present in a decisive stage of being admitted as a full member of the Council. Despite substantial information to the SRSG by the PIO, UNMIK has not yet decided its position towards the Convention and the consequences for Kosovo (Under SC 1244) of FRY-Membership to the Council of Europe. It is to be feared that there will be either conflicts between FRY/Serbia and UNMIK/PISG on the vote to and inclusion in Council of Europe programs and bodies, or this will be to the disadvantage of the Kosovo system, being not adequately represented in the Council of Europe, as until now there is no respective clause in the accession documents and reports.
6. Other Council of Europe impacts
Most welcome where other activities launched by the Council of Europe, e.g., the History Project and all activities in the wide spectrum of Human Rights, electoral education, and regional and local development of decentralised civil policies. Other projects were focused on law training and the preparation of the bar exams. The project ‘Universities as Sites of Democratic Citizenship’ had a significant impact on university reforms, mainly in Pristina. Support in the fields of language policy and community inclusion were well received. The cooperation with the Parliamentary Assembly was equally good, the reports delivered to the responsible Committee and the field visits by parliamentarians had a great impact on the better understanding of education and academic problems in Kosovo. Contacts with CLARE were also established.
A highly appreciated approach was the cooperation with the OECD and the Stability Pact on the thematic and regional ‘Country Reports’, which resulted in a significant international conference on Education in Kosovo in June 2002.
7. Brain Drain
One special problem shall be mentioned with great concern: Kosovo is threatened by a significant brain drain, which, once in full development, will irreversibly continue. In this respect, Kosovo is different from other countries in the region. A rather conservative estimate is that no more than 50% of all graduates will find adequate employment in Kosovo; this means that 50% will have to migrate for legal employment outside the territory. It must not occur that the most able of the young generation is forced to leave the country permanently, thus also endangering the impact of young taxpayers for the social welfare policy. One solution of the problem would be in the provision of a temporary training and employment migration with strong incentives for returns and re-employment in the country. But this will need quite a few multi-lateral agreements and comprehensive strategies; the Council of Europe can play another important role in participating in such approaches.
8. The bigger framework
However, this leads to a critical aspect of the highest political range: It is well known that in the whole region, and of course in Kosovo, there is a lot of parallel activity deployed by several European and global agencies, such as OSCE, the Stability Pact, the EU, the World Bank, and numerous governmental and non-governmental organisations.
The main problems are the following:
· Too many agencies compete for the same sectors. This is detrimental for all soft sectors, because these (education, health, social welfare, culture, labour and employment) share a big demand for external support and, at the same time, do not fit well into the economic mainstream of policies, such as SAP, the Stabilisation and Association Program of the EU.
· Fundraising and focusing on multi-lateral actions, which are connecting developments in cross-boundary and cross-sector approaches, become inappropriately difficult. For Kosovo, the additional problems is that the territory is not a ‘country’, and despite PISG is facing difficulties to improve its regional inclusion. (This has inter alia causes both in UNMIK policy and the PISG’s weakness to align with some of Kosovo’s neighbours).
· This aspect is detrimental to sustained stabilisation in Kosovo insofar, as the ‘soft sectors’ are inadequately discussed with the governments in Belgrade and thus build up a legacy, which may hamper status-negotiations at a later stage.
· Bi-lateral activities restrain multi-lateral approaches, and thus slow down involuntarily the need of bridging time gaps in development.
One of the consequences for the Council of Europe will be to decide in which way its role to act together with some other key-players, like the Stability Pact, can be improved, e.g., in the sectors of mutual recognition of certificates, school- and university-degrees, quality standards and mobility. Cross-sector programs need a tighter coordination, e.g.
· To create a system of social incentives for motivating individuals to actively support and develop reforms in education (or, more clearly, what social benefits must be secured for teachers in order to win them as permanent allies in the implementation of reforms).
· To coordinate fund-raising for long-term projects and to assign a sort of ‘Lead Agencies’ for the region (and not only for one education system) in order to create synergy, and have European Standards becoming fast the imperative over national or local claims for exaggerated autonomy.
· Lessons learned from the accomplishments and shortcomings in other parts of the region (especially Bosnia-Herzegovina, “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, Croatia) shall be communicated through the Council of Europe, because the CD-ESR is a good forum through its composition from both government and academic members.
· To secure a prominent role for the development of soft sectors as the fundaments for sustainable development in the hard sectors, like security and economy.
9. Political considerations on Kosovo
It is no secret that Kosovo has difficulties to represent all sectors equally through the ministries in PISG. The Prime Minister and the President of the Assembly are certainly prominent representatives of the successful policy of UNMIK and the PISG, but this can be said with less conviction of many leaders in the soft sectors, such as education. In order to avoid a further alienation between the international community and the people, well-tuned programs of uninterrupted impact are needed. This means also to strengthen the impact of soft sectors within the UNMIK policy at large, and to intensify the cross sector strategies in some areas, e.g., continuing education, vocational training, staff development, comprehensive education strategies for IDPs and ideological disarmament. Most promising are the attitudes of teachers and students, who are continuously being taken care of in long-term teacher training programs, as by the Lead Agency KEDP (Kosovo Educators Development Project) or the Special Needs Education projects by the Helsinki Group. (There are more of such positive examples). The simultaneous fortification of the policy-impact by education and the de-politisation of the sector will remain a most prominent task, which is worthwhile for the Council of Europe to be observed in the future.
UNMIK and PISG will have to imply more sustainable elements of the soft sectors into their policy in order to make Kosovo capable of negotiating its future with the neighbours on a reasonable level. The Council of Europe should continue to support this policy, while trying to contribute to a closer co-ordination between the sectors.
10. About the author
The author was one of the co-founders of the Pristina Working Group after the meeting in Bologna on 18 and 19 June 1999, when experts from the Council of Europe, the then CRE (EUA today) and representatives from some national governments and rectors conferences convened. At that time, he was member of the Board of the CC-HER, of CRE and IAUP. His participation in the first exploratory mission 25-28 July 1999 was formative for his contributions to the planning of the University of Pristina (UP) rehabilitation; after several field visits, UNMIK offered him a position as International Administrator of the University (of Pristina), with significant support from the the Council of Europe, the CRE and the German and Austrian Governments. From 22 February 2000, Michael Daxner served in this position, until he took over responsibility for the whole Department of Education and Science on 18 April 2000. After the establishment of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo (PISG), he continued to advise the newly appointed Minister of Education, Science and Technology after handover on 3 March 2002, as Principal International Officer and Acting Permanent Secretary. He concluded his work for UNMIK in Belgrade as Special Counsellor, being responsible for the civil administration cooperation between UNMIK and the Serb Government and agencies between May and September 2002. At present, Michael Daxner is preparing an implementation study for soft sector policy in South East Europe for the Austrian Government.