Plemetina : a refugee camp only a few miles away from home

Background

About 700 Askaljia and Roma IDPs are currently living in the Emergency Temporary Location in Plemetina. The Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS) manages the site as implementing partner for UNHCR.

The people in the camp come from five different municipalities (most of them are only a few miles from Plemetina) : Fushe Kosova, Skenderaj, Prishtina, Obiliq and Lipian. The camp hosts also few Serbian families from Kraina (Croatia). The majority is Askaljia and speaks Albanian as mother tongue, then the Roma speak Roma language and all of them do speak Serbian.

All the IDPs (Internal Displaced Persons) living in the site do not have any possibility to go out from here. In fact they risk to be killed by some Albanians who see them as guilty and collaborationist of the Serbs during the war. This is the rule also for the children living in the camp who cannot share their infancy with the other children of Kosovo.

Awaiting for general improvement of security conditions in Kosovo, that will allow their return home, ICS is trying –amongst other players- to provide these persons with all cultural, educational and social opportunities that might ease their reintegration in a multiethnic society.

In the site there is already a school run by few people that almost a year and a half ago decided to create a possibility for themselves and their children. The school is in the process of being recognized by UNMIK and about 100 children do attend it everyday. The school has two First grade classes (of 22 and 24 children each) and two Second grade classes (of 23 and 20 children each). Often in one class there are children from 6 to 11.

There is no telephone in Plemetina, but the camp has a room with three computers and ICS together with Swiss Agency for Development and Reconstruction (SDC) organized a two months-course addressed to 30 participants. The course now is over but ICS is organizing shifts for the use of computers.

ICS staff thinks that EducWeb's project of putting Internet in the camp would be a very good thing for its inhabitants. It will rise the level of the computer use already learned by the people in the computer courses, it will also give to the children and not only the chance to communicate with the outside world explaining their living conditions and exchanging ideas.

At this moment, one Belgian primary school already volunteered to be the first "twin". We hope other schools will follow.

A Few More Pictures