Blakaj: Registering war damage within the census framework is problematic, it could lead to a distorted picture

Bekim Blakaj from the Humanitarian Law Center sees the decision to include the damage caused during the 1999 war in the population census in Kosovo, which began today, as problematic. He notes that it would require a verification mechanism and that the enumerators are not adequately trained for such sensitive issues, which could lead to a "distorted picture" in terms of data.

Blakaj emphasizes that documenting war damage will complicate the entire process.

"I don't believe that those conducting the census are sufficiently trained to document material damage. Furthermore, I am not aware of any verification mechanism for the data obtained, because if there is no evidence and in most cases there are no longer any traces of the suffered material damage, such as demolished houses and other buildings, I fear that we could end up with a distorted picture of the material damage caused during the war in Kosovo. Perhaps it would be better to establish a professional commission solely dedicated to this task, to create a strategy and plan, and especially to prepare that verification mechanism for the data, to avoid duplications. Therefore, I don't think it's wise to conduct a census of material damage during the war alongside the population census," Blakaj said.

One of the questions in the census will be whether there were casualties in their households during the war, which Blakaj also finds problematic because there is no verification mechanism.

"If there is no verification mechanism, if those conducting the census are not adequately trained, and most importantly, if there is no software to process this data immediately and avoid possible duplications, then we could end up with a situation where we get new data, a list that would surely, I believe, be larger than the existing list of victims, and then we would create another problem that we would have to deal with in the future. In the end, when it comes to the killed and missing, there is an accurate list of the missing that has been accepted by all sides, and if the government wants to consider that list, it can verify it or take lists from civil society organizations and verify them in the field. But creating a new list, a list of victims, I believe that would create new problems," Blakaj said.