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Human and Minority Rights in the Life Cycle of Ethnic Conflicts

MIRICO

MIRICO (Human and Minority rights in the life cycle of ethnic conflicts) was a scientific project which was funded under the 6th framework program of the EU (Start date: 05/2006; end date: 10/2008). EURAC was the lead partner and successfully orchestrated the interplay of six universities and research institutions from Italy, Austria, Germany, the UK and the Balkan countries.

Thematic approach:

During the series of wars and ethnic conflicts with serious human rights violations and ethnic cleansing in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the international community reacted through crisis management. Nevertheless, the EU is still faced with unresolved problems such as the „final status" of Kosovo, and the question of how to deal with the problem of accommodating ethnic and territorial claims in order to prevent spill-over effects in forms of new conflicts and refugees in the region itself and into the EU.

Moreover, a coherent EU-policy of the new neighbourhood (Caucasus, Ukraine, Russia) face the same problem of how to accommodate ethnic and cultural diversity in order to prevent serious human rights violations in existing and possible future conflicts. The overall objective of the project was to analyse which status human and minority rights did and do have in all phases of ethnic conflicts, and, finally, in the phase of re-construction and reconciliation. As a parallel process the development of the EU foreign policy and its shift from re-active crisis management to regional stabilisation and association with the prospect of full EU-membership will be analysed. In this regard the role of human and minority rights for the external relations of the EU was covered.

The following reports have been elaborated in the frame of the FP6 project
"Human and Minority Rights in the Life Cycle of Ethnic Conflicts"

Work package 1:
Analysis of international instruments and of the role of international actors in the field of human and minority rights

Report 1:
Minority Rights Instruments and Mechanisms: Minority Protection along the Conflict Continuum

Report 2:
Interplay between the Council of Europe, OSCE, EU and NATO

Work package 2:
Analysis of the pre-conflict phase and conflict phases of the dissolution of the multi-national communist federation of Yugoslavia and of the response of the EC/EU to the escalating crisis in the early 1990s and again in relation to Kosovo in the late 1990s.

Report 1:
Theory and Practice of Human Rights and Minority Rights under the Yugoslav Communist System

Report 2:
Country specific report on Croatia

Report 3:
Country specific report on Bosnia and Herzegovina

Report 4:
Country specific report on Serbia

Report 5:
Country specific report on Kosovo

Report 6:
Country specific report on Macedonia

Report 7:
Reactive Crisis Management of the EU

Report 8:
Synthetic report

Work package 3:
Analysis of the role of human and minority rigths during conflict settlement

Report 1:
Country specific report on the conflict settlement in Croatia

Report 2:
Country specific report on the conflict settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Report 3:
Country specific report on the conflict settlement in Kosovo

Report 4:
Country specific report on the conflict settlement in Serbia