Post-conflict property restitution in Kosovo: A continuing challenge

by Guido van Heugten

Guido van Heugten graduated from the ‘NOHA’ masters program in International Humanitarian Action at Uppsala University). He wrote his thesis on ‘Post-Conflict Property Restitution in Kosovo’.

Even over a decade after the violent conflict of 1999, Kosovo is often still referred to as a ‘hot potato’ that has been passed on from the UN to the EU, which is currently desperately searching for ways to find a resolution for the dispute between the governments in Belgrade and Pristina. The recently elected Serbian president Tomislav Nikolic has stated that Kosovo Serbs are currently living under threat of genocide and that he would not rule out a partition between ethnic Serb and Albanian regions. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, on a visit to Kosovo, tried to focus more on common challenges and opportunities and made another attempt to stress the importance of dialogue in order to find resolution to the regions issues.

The population of Kosovo is indeed still much divided between the lines of ethnicity and identity, fuelling a volatile security situation, especially in the Northern provinces surrounding the divided town of Mitrovica. Together with resolution of the political problems relating to Kosovo’s continuing status as a UN protectorate, it is crucial that serious efforts are being made by all stakeholders to finish the property restitution process and ensure respect for housing, land and property (HLP) rights in the context of conflict resolution efforts in the region.

Due to the 1990s trends toward increasing displacement and internal conflicts and the decreasing will of Western states to provide asylum, voluntary return (as opposed to resettlement) became the preferred policy when dealing with displaced populations in post-conflict contexts. This is also expressed by the development of international policy around that time, culminating in the adoption of the ‘Pinheiro Principles’ on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons in 2005.

The 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo caused immense damage to property, which the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights determined was not solely an act of vandalism, but an attempt at wiping out signs of the presence of entire populations, including their national and cultural identity.[1] In most UN peacekeeping missions, HLP rights usually do not play a very central role, even though land and property issues are often an underlying cause of conflict. Kosovo however, has been one of the few places where the UN has decided to give property restitution an important role in the peace-building process.[2]

The Kampala Convention on internal displacement in Africa: What does it mean for housing, land and property restitution?

by Mike Asplet and Megan Bradley

Mike Asplet is an attorney currently working with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. Megan Bradley is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she works with the Brookings-LSE Project.

The African Union’s Kampala Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Africa will hopefully come into force any day now. When it does, it will be the first regional treaty to comprehensively address the IDP issue, from preventing displacement to providing protection and assistance, and supporting durable solutions. The Kampala Convention represents a critical new tool for tackling some of the largest and most complex IDP situations in the world: some 10 million people are internally displaced across the continent, making up one third of the world’s IDP population.

The treaty reflects well-established normative frameworks, primarily the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which have to date provided the foundation for IDP protection and assistance efforts. However, the Kampala Convention also significantly advances the normative framework on internal displacement in several key areas. These include protection from arbitrary displacement; the responsibilities of the African Union, multinational companies and private security actors; and the right to a remedy for the wrongs associated with displacement, including the loss of housing, land and property (HLP). The question of remedies for lost HLP is particularly important, as land conflict is at the root of many internal displacement flows in Africa, and the resolution of hotly contested land claims represents a key barrier to solutions for thousands of IDPs.

On first glance, it doesn’t seem like the Kampala Convention has much to say about land issues, and in particular the restitution of displaced persons’ lost property. In light of the popularization of the (contested) UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (the so-called “Pinheiro Principles”) and trends such as the now-common practice of explicitly addressing the restoration of displaced persons’ HLP rights in peace treaties, it is striking that there is no reference to restitution in the Kampala Convention. This omission is clearly deliberate. While many provisions from the Guiding Principles have been specifically incorporated into the Kampala Convention (in some places without amendment), the documents diverge considerably in their approach to question of HLP rights, and restitution in particular.

Beyond restitution: New book explores property rights and durable solutions for the displaced

by Anneke Smit

Anneke Smit is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor (Canada), where she teaches Property Law. She has worked on displacement and post-conflict property issues for more than a decade, including in Kosovo with OSCE and in Georgia with a grassroots human rights NGO. She is the author of The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution, published this year by Routledge.

Recent posts in TN by Roger Duthie and Megan Bradley as well as Rhodri Williams, highlight the importance of transitional justice in bringing displacement to an end and encouraging processes of reconciliation. Yuliya Alieva’s post on the two decades of internal displacement in Azerbaijan is a critical reminder of the intensifying need to consider the full range of durable solutions – local integration and resettlement in addition to return, in particular in protracted displacements. These discussions reinforce the importance of post-conflict housing, land and property (HLP) restitution to contribute to these processes, but they are also reminders of the limitations of the current international legal framework.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the enormous strides which have been taken in the last decades with respect to post-conflict HLP restitution. The international legal framework on HLP restitution is since 2005 dominated by the (non-binding) UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (The Pinheiro Principles). Principle 2 of the Pinheiro Principles states in part:

2.1 All refugees and displaced persons have the right to have restored to them any housing, land and/or property of which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived[.]

As such, the Principles prioritize restitution “in kind” (or in rem) as the preferred remedy to conflict-related HLP rights deprivations. Other remedies, including but not limited to compensation, are possible but these are clearly subordinated to return of the actual property. Since their inception, the Pinheiro Principles have been discussed and publicized widely. At first, it seemed taboo to criticize the Pinheiro Principles, given the substantial and hard-won contribution they made to a critical area of post-conflict justice and solutions to displacement. Recently, however, it seems the floodgates of criticism have opened.

Rhodri’s recent blog post on the UN high level rule of law meeting alluded to the place of HLP restitution within the framework of rights-based humanitarianism; in what I find a particularly compelling warning about that movement, Hugo Slim wrote a few years ago in a paper for ODI that “as a debate essentially concerned with a political, moral and legal framework, rights-based humanitarianism may never leave the paper and seminar rooms where it is debated and find the means to have a practical effect.” This is, of course, the crux of the problem with the Pinheiro Principles – they are a lovely piece of work on paper but one which in many cases has had trouble achieving a significant practical outcome. Much of the criticism seems to point to this question: are refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) actually better off for the existence of the Pinheiro Principles?

I am a pragmatist at heart, but one who does not believe we should throw the human rights baby out with the bathwater. In Beyond Restitution my critique is two-fold. First, I argue, through a discussion that includes consideration of the development of the rights to HLP restitution and return, analysis of a dozen post-conflict case studies, and consideration of the meaning of “home” in the context of forced displacement, that the desired results of return and reintegration could not have been expected to flow directly from Pinheiro-style restitution. Second, I take this analysis as a springboard to address how the post-conflict HLP framework might continue to develop in a way which more effectively contributes to durable solutions, without losing a necessary link to transitional justice and reconciliation. I outline two of my primary arguments here; the book of course treats them in more detail:

UN High-Level RoL meeting to take up HLP issues … maybe

by Rhodri C. Williams

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar marking the tenth anniversary of Sweden’s government agency “for international peace intervention”, the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA). The topic of the seminar was rule of law (RoL) in general and this Tuesday’s UN conference on the issue in particular. The high level meeting at this year’s 67th session of the UN General Assembly is one of these periodic, frantic plenary meetings where all the states in the world along with a plethora of observers and NGOs culminate weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling with (hopefully) the adoption of an outcome document that may push an important issue forward a few steps.

In the best case, the outcome will have legs even if the grandiosely named meetings themselves quickly fall into the obscurity of UN genealogy. Students are frequently bemused to hear that they failed to notice a “World Summit” hosted by the UN in 2005. However, few have failed to notice the resulting responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine. And for those of us in the rights-based humanitarianism branch, the strong endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement buried in paragraph 132 of the Outcome Document may come to be seen as a pretty important step in the long march from soft law to opinio juris. But I digress.

Some of the talk at the FBA seminar was about the high-level politics of the high-level meeting, and particularly an emerging tendency to distinguish RoL as applied at the international versus the national levels. This has apparently been one of the key debates surrounding the drafting of the outcome document, with states that see domestic RoL as one of their own virtues more inclined to promote it to others (and the targets of their exhortations curiously more interested in the international variant). However, all indications are that there will be a buffet-style compromise, with both national and international RoL, as well as various ‘nexuses’ in between on offer.

This is perhaps most clearly evinced in the UN Secretary-General’s preparatory report for the conference, which proposes the adoption of a broad and often ambitious programme of action. Some proposals are simply unrealistic (states should ‘remove any reservations’ to UN treaties they have ratified, para. 12). Others are curious to the point of evoking typos (UN post-conflict RoL assistance should ‘promote gender’, full stop – para. 24). However, the overall feel of the document is quite sound, reflecting an increasingly emphatic accommodation of legal empowerment and economic/social concerns in an area of practice that arguably began as a bastion of orthodox civil and political imperatives.

Doing justice for refugees and IDPs? Confronting displacement through transitional justice

by Roger Duthie and Megan Bradley

Roger Duthie is a Senior Associate in the Research Unit at the International Center for Transitional Justice. Megan Bradley is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she works with the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement.

Serious human rights violations are very often an integral part of displacement crises. Certain violations, such as mass killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, and rape, often cause displacement, while others, such as the destruction of homes and property, can be aimed at undercutting the possibility to return home. Forcible displacement is frequently a deliberate strategy used by parties to a conflict and can in itself constitute a war crime or a crime against humanity. In addition, displacement can leave its victims vulnerable to other abuses, without the protection provided by their homes, livelihoods, communities, and governance structures.

Transitional justice is generally understood to be a response to the legacies of massive and serious human rights violations, one that tries to provide redress for victims and accountability for perpetrators through a set of measures including criminal prosecution, truth-telling, reparation, and institutional reform. Given the links between rights violations and displacement, transitional justice measures certainly have good reasons to address the issue of displacement. And yet, for the most part, displacement has not been the focus of a lot of transitional justice practice and literature.

In 2009, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement began a collaborative research project to examine the role that transitional justice could play as part of the response to displacement. Specifically, we looked at the capacity of transitional justice measures to address displacement, to respond to the justice claims of internally displaced persons and refugees, and to support durable solutions. Importantly, we also looked at the conceptual links between transitional justice measures and the activities of the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors that generally work more directly on displacement.

The project’s final products include a report that highlights our conclusions and recommendations; an edited volume containing the project’s thematic studies; and 14 case studies on country experiences from Central Africa, Colombia, Israel-Palestine, Kosovo, Liberia, Peru, Timor-Leste, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia. These are all available to download through the ICTJ and Brookings-LSE Project websites. ICTJ’s website also has an interactive map to highlight the research though photographs and visual data.

What were some of our most important findings? To start with, a number of recent reports, resolutions, and guidelines have acknowledged the need for societies struggling to resolve displacement crises to respond to the justice concerns of IDPs and refugees. These include the 2004 and 2011 versions of the Report of the Secretary-General on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s 2010 Framework on Durable Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons, the 2009 African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, and the UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons.

Furthermore, while transitional justice measures have not traditionally engaged in depth with the concerns of refugees and IDPs, they have in some places addressed displacement. Restitution of housing, land, and property, for example, is the justice measure probably most directly connected to displacement, and restitution programs have been implemented in countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Timor, Kosovo, and Iraq.

Reparations programs can provide benefits for abuses that led to displacement, for harms suffered while displaced, or for displacement itself, but while programs in Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia consider displaced persons eligible to receive benefits, they are yet to receive any for the violation of displacement itself. Truth commissions, as in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, and Guatemala, are increasingly recognizing and investigating displacement, with some holding sessions making recommendations on the issue. And an international legal framework now exists to criminally prosecute arbitrary displacement when it qualifies as a war crime or crime against humanity, and cases at the ICC, the ICTY, and in Colombia have included charges of forcible displacement.

We also found that responding to displacement with transitional justice raises a particular set of challenges. For example, given the scope and complexity of large-scale displacement, transitional justice measures have a limited capacity to deal directly with the problem. This is particularly the case with measures that seek to provide redress directly to victims, because the large numbers of displaced people present significant resource and institutional challenges. Criminal justice efforts may also be constrained, both because, with limited resources, prosecutors often prioritize more traditional crimes and may be hesitant to add to the complexity of cases by including displacement crimes, but also because international jurisprudence on forcible displacement as a crime is less developed than it is for other violations.

European restitution in a nutshell

by Rhodri C. Williams

NB: This text is actually an opportunistic reposting of a rather lengthy response I did to a comment on my previous post on displacement and transitional justice. The writing of it proceeded too quickly and smoothly to be true, so I thought I’d better put it out there for discriminating TN readers to pick apart. 

The rule in Europe is that redressing ‘historical’ property claims is generally a matter of political discretion. The bottom line is that property confiscations undertaken after a country has acceded to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) will be reviewed by the Strasbourg Court for compliance with the rights to property and the home, but those taken beforehand are not subject to retroactive review.

Only in cases where a state has voluntarily adopted a remedy for historical takings will the Court review its application in order to address claims of discrimination or procedural unfairness – as in the ‘Bug River’ line of cases that involved Poland:

http://echrblog.blogspot.se/2008/10/pilot-has-landed.html

Controversially however, these rules have not always been consistently applied, for instance in the Blecic v. Croatia case discussed in the below post (which describes resulting efforts to ensure that past wrongful confiscations are at least taken into account in political decisions related to European integration):

http://terra0nullius.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/the-pace-poulsen-principles-can-the-coe-shake-up-europes-restitution-debate/

The ultimate failure of European institutions to politically or legally address these issues in candidate countries such as Croatia has been underscored by findings that they constituted acts of persecution amounting to crimes against humanity by the ICTY:

http://terra0nullius.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/yugoslavia-tribunal-issues-gotovina-judgment-discriminatory-property-laws-deemed-persecution/

However, these concerns have more force in relatively recent and clearly wrongful confiscations related to the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Earlier nationalizations and other confiscations may have actually been fully permissible under human rights law at the time, at least insofar as they were not punitive or discriminatory (if you are really interested see my 2007 piece comparing Czech de-nationalization with post-conflict and Apartheid restitution processes):

http://ictj.org/publication/contemporary-right-property-restitution-context-transitional-justice

Nevertheless, some critics have maintained that the Court has gone to excessive lengths to dodge considering such cases. These critiques are described in a bit more detail in a recent paper I co-wrote on the Court’s approach to the Cyprus property issue:

http://terra0nullius.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/when-do-home-and-property-part-ways-new-report-on-the-echr-and-the-cyprus-property-question/

Finally, a good example of historical takings that are clearly wrongful is confiscations of Jewish property by the Nazis. It has been a long time coming, but there is now recognition that such property should in principle be restituted:

http://terra0nullius.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/the-terezin-declaration-and-new-guidelines-on-inter-generational-restitution/

Mainstreaming IDP principles in capacity building efforts: A chance missed in Kosovo

by Milica Matijevic and Massimo Moratti

Although more than a decade has passed since the end of hostilities in Kosovo, the process of post-conflict property restitution is far from complete. Apart from the cases still awaiting adjudication before the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA), the mass claims mechanism dedicated to post-conflict property repossession, the local judiciary also deals with a significant number of conflict-related property claims that fall outside of the mandate of the KPA. These cases concern issues crucial to durable solutions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Kosovo, such as illegal occupation of property, forged contracts of sale, exchanges under duress, and illegal demolition of property.

The project “Further support to IDPS and Refugees in Serbia” has recently published a report on the difficulties faced by IDPs in accessing the court system in Kosovo and how a number of bureaucratic requirements, apparently of a merely technical nature, in reality have a significant impact on access to justice for IDPs, potentially violating their right to fair trial. The report argues that for these cases to be effectively resolved, the justice system needs to take into account the fact of displacement and the difficult position of IDPs.

According to international fair trial standards, access to justice should be granted for everybody, regardless of one person’s status. In the context of Kosovo this would mean that the local laws and institutions should enable effective access to courts, not only for the resident population but also for those who were displaced as a consequence of conflict (who are nevertheless considered as habitual residents of Kosovo). This obligation becomes even more compelling when IDPs are predominated by the largest single ethnic minority group, as it is the case in Kosovo.

Land, property and displacement in post-revolution Libya

by Rhodri C. Williams

An earlier version of this text was submitted to Forced Migration Review for its newly released Issue 39 on “North Africa and displacement 2011-2012″. The article has been published there in a shorter version. I can recommend the entire, highly topical magazine and am grateful to the editors for their permission to publish the longer version of my piece here.

By post-conflict standards, Libya has a relatively small population of about 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). However, as a result of basic security concerns, many individual IDPs – as well as several entire displaced communities – face the prospect of protracted internal displacement. Despite national and local efforts to foster reconciliation, return will not be a realistic prospect for many until after the national elections currently scheduled for July. Inability to access pre-displacement housing, land and property (HLP) assets poses a significant obstacle to the achievement of durable solutions for almost all IDPs.

However, there is significant variation in the nature of the HLP problem. For households that remain displaced within their own communities due to the wartime destruction of their homes, durable solutions are largely contingent on reconstruction. However, for IDPs displaced outside of their places of origin, inability to access pre-war homes and properties is merely a symptom of the broader insecurity that has blocked virtually all return to date. In most cases, IDPs also face significant tenure insecurity in their current locations, whether they are in collective settlements or private accommodations.

Lurking behind both the tenure insecurity currently facing IDPs and their difficulties accessing pre-war property is a much broader question related to the sweeping and arbitrary redistributions of property undertaken during the forty-two year reign of Libya’s ex-dictator Muammar Ghaddafi. These waves of confiscation and partial compensation undermined the rule of law and sowed the seeds of corruption and legal uncertainty that continue to affect nearly all sectors of society in Libya. While these acts are largely viewed as illegitimate by the interim National Transitional Council (NTC), there is broad recognition that any peremptory attempt to revoke them would risk destabilizing the country.

As a result, these ‘legacy’ property issues are unlikely to be definitively resolved until after the upcoming elections, in the context of democratically-grounded legislative and constitutional reforms. From this perspective, the HLP question in Libya must be seen not only through a humanitarian lens, but also from the perspectives of transitional justice, national reconciliation, rule of law and economic development. While IDPs – and some refugees in Libya – may be disproportionately affected by this question, almost every constituency in the country has a stake in its outcome.

Norwegian Refugee Council releases new Housing, Land and Property training course

by Laura Cunial

Laura Cunial is the lead author and trainer for the NRC/IDMC Housing Land and Property Training Course. She has worked on housing, land and property (HLP) rights and peacebuilding in countries such as Liberia, Kenya, Vietnam and Dijbouti and currently works as an Adviser for the Information, Counseling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) Program with the NRC.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) have, in collaboration with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), developed a training course on Housing, Land and Property (HLP) issues.  The material has been developed under the NRC’s Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) programme  with funds provided by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO).

The development of the HLP Training Course is part of NRC’s effort to further improve its work through the mainstreaming of HLP considerations into all programming.  The humanitarian community recognizes that HLP issues are main conflict drivers and that they should be addressed from the earliest stages of humanitarian interventions. As a result, NRC has invested significant resources to increase its knowledge on HLP and improve its response, including the methodologies used for resolving housing, land and property disputes.

NRC has  been at the forefront for many years in providing assistance on HLP issues to displaced persons and other populations affected by conflict. This has been done both through NRC’s interventions related to the shelter and food security sectors, and through highly specialised ICLA programmes. The HLP Training Course aims at improving the quality and effectiveness of humanitarian response through improved capacity on HLP issues. The course material is designed for all humanitarians implementing response and recovery projects and is not just meant for HLP specialists.

The course material has been tested in several NRC Country Programs. The evaluation of the relevance and quality of each training session was used to improve the subsequent trainings and to refine the modules.  In addition, the material was developed in consultation with the HLP sub-working group of the Global Protection Cluster Working Group. As a result, the training material is versatile and can be tailored to different training needs and target audiences.

The NRC HLP Training Manual is currently available in English, French and Spanish and consists of the following modules:

• Module No. 1: An introduction to Housing, Land and Property
• Module No. 2: The Housing, Land and Property International Legal Framework and Principle
• Module No. 3: Housing, Land and Property during internal displacement
• Module No. 4: Women’s Housing, Land and Property rights
• Module No. 5: Housing, Land and Property in urban contexts
• Module No. 6: Addressing Housing, Land and Property disputes
• Module No. 7: Housing, Land and Property and durable solutions

Since early 2011, NRC has delivered more than 15 HLP trainings in the following locations: South Sudan, Afghanistan, the occupied Palestinian territory, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Switzerland, Pakistan, Colombia and Ivory Coast. Trainees included staff from NRC, international and national NGOs, ICRC, UN agencies  such as OCHA, OHCHR, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR and UN HABITAT  as well as national authorities.

The material can be requested by downloading a request form from the training manual web page and sending it to the email address hlp@nrc.no. More information on ICLA and the HLP Training Course are available on the NRC ICLA web page.

In search of a duty-bearer: No remedy for destruction of property during Kosovo’s international supervision

by Milica Matijevic and Massimo Moratti

It is easy to guess that, as in most legal aid programmes implemented in post-conflict settings, the majority of cases handled by the EU funded legal aid project “Further support to refugees and IDPs in Serbia” concern repossession of property owned by IDPs and refugees. These are mostly cases of property restitution and/or compensation for property that can’t be repossessed. This topic has been the focus of a newly released report dealing with these aspects of the right to property restitution and/or compensation.

When dealing with competent officials in the field, be they international or domestic, we often hear the statement that the case of Kosovo is “specific” or “particularly complicated”. For those dealing with housing, land and property rights, this should be nothing new. Every displacement crisis has its own specific aspects and by their own inherent nature property cases are very often “particularly complicated”. Unfortunately, the rationale behind the explanation of this kind is that international human rights standards shouldn’t be applied, and possibly the status quo shouldn’t be touched.

In its most recent report the Project assesses a number of questions “specific” to the context of Kosovo and, in fact, shows how international standards are applicable to the Kosovo context.  Although it is not always clear who the duty bearers are, it is clear that IDPs and those forced from their homes by the conflict are the right holders and that the difficulty in identifying the duty bearer renders the rights of IDPs meaningless.

The report proceeds from the general rule that internally displaced persons enjoy the same set of rights as any other citizen of the state within which they reside. When applied to the situation of an internally displaced person from Kosovo this would mean that they can assert their property rights on the same basis as any other resident of Kosovo.

Notwithstanding the fact that the applicable legal framework contains strong guarantees of the right to property, including the right to be compensated for unlawful damaging or destruction of one’s property, the position of IDPs is often not adequately taken into account by the relevant national and international authorities and their claims remain largely unattended.

The report deals with a specific caseload, the famous “18,000 compensation claims”. These are claims that were brought by IDPs from Kosovo against the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo for compensation of damages to private property that occurred as a result of the 1999 NATO air campaign and the March 2004 riots. Those claims were for long time “frozen” by a request of UNMIK, which later on was found in violation of the right to a fair trial by the UNMIK Human Rights Advisory Panel, in Opinions released on February 23, 2011 (Esat Berisa Case no. 27/08 and others v UNMIK) and March 24, 2010 (Petko Milogoric, Case no. 38/08 and others v UNMIK)