Kosovo- Serbia Dialogue Deadlock is Suffocating Civic Initiatives

Since political talks between Kosovo and Serbia  stalled, civil society in both countries are facing significant obstacles to maintain the cooperation between citizens through art and culture.

Politics took precedence over art this year, preventing the holding of a festival designed to foster exchange between the two societies. 

Recently, the “Mirëdita, Dobar dan” festival,which typically alternates between Prishtina and Belgrade, was blocked from taking place in Belgrade this year.

Obstacles to cooperation

For Marko Milosavljevic, Head of Research and Advocacy of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) in Serbia, the prohibition of this year’s edition of the festival in Belgrade is clear evidence of the obstruction to cooperation. 

Milosavljevic notes that non-governmental organizations had taken on the responsibility to foster reconciliation between the two countries, as state institutions have failed to do so.

“In the last five years, we see that each in our own way, the Government of Kosovo and the Government of Serbia have obstructed that process – from the censorship of audio dramas by Radio Kosova, produced by the NGO Integra, which contain the stories of the missing people, to the most recent ban of “Miredita, Dobar dan” festival by the Serbian police,” Milosavljevic told Prishtina Insight in an interview.

The festival promotes cultural and artistic cooperation between Kosovo and Serbia and was scheduled to take place in Belgrade from June 27 to 29.

In June, however, the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs banned the event, citing “the risk to people’s safety and property,” following a far-right rally opposing the festival. Despite the cancellation, Milosavljevic is confident that the festival will be held in Prishtina next year and will continue in  Belgrade in 2026.

“We will not give up from the festival, but we will certainly strive to network better, because many crucial voices are under attack from the authorities in Serbia and Kosovo,” he added.

For Milosavljevic, these obstacles to cooperation result from the refusal to begin the process of creating positive peace between Serbia and Kosovo. 

He emphasizes that the continuation of these challenges means that new and existing infrastructure will be used to further military agendas  rather than serve as channels for fostering peace and cooperation.

“When communication channels are blocked and people’s freedom of movement is hindered, it means that the highways being built are merely to facilitate the passage of tanks and cannons,” Milosavljevic said.

He sees it as the duty of both generations to bring together communities traumatized by the war and to design proper transitional justice strategies.

“Kosovo’s transitional justice strategy must include the suffering of the non-Albanian victims as well as the Albanian population that suffered from the KLA. In Serbia, war criminals like Nebojsa Pavkovic must not be national heroes that teach classes at school, but those who will show where the undiscovered mass graves are,” Milosavljevic says.

Although political leaders have dominated the Brussels meetings as the only form of dialogue, Milosavljevic points to examples like the cooperation between the two missing persons’ associations, which have jointly presented demands to both governments and the international community.

After the cancellation of the “Mirëdita, Dobar dan” festival, journalists and the team from Prishtina, who had arrived in Belgrade to cover the event, were forced to return empty-handed. 

The Belgrade mayor, Aleksandar Sapic, who recently won a second term in the office, said that he would never allow the city to provide any kind of support to the festival, and spread misinformation about the festival’s aims, previous activities, and participants.

Conspiracy theories in Serbia expressed concerns that the timing of the festival coincided with Vidovdan. The Serbian Orthodox Church celebrates St. Vitus’ Day on June 28 – a date that coincides with commemorations of the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottoman Turks, which took place in 1389 and has become a key event in Serbian history and was used heavily in anti-Muslim rhetoric during the Balkan Wars.

Milosavljevic argues that it is even more significant to hold such a festival on Vidovdan because it marks the day when Milosevic announced his war intentions in 1989, leading to a decade of war and his eventual surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, on charges of war crimes.

“Unlike those who celebrate the cult of death and revenge on that day and observe Vidovdan exclusively in an ethnic-religious way, this year we wanted to celebrate life and human dignity, and in that sense there is no better reason than to do it precisely on Vidovdan,” he said.

Resolving war issues

Despite delays in resolving the fate of the victims of the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, Milosavljevic sees some progress through the internationalization of the Kosovo issue, leading to NATO bombings and subsequent prosecutions before the ICTY and Kosovo Specialist Chambers.

He stresses that 25 years after the Kumanovo Agreement, which oversaw withdrawal of Serb armed forces from Kosovo in June 1999, issues like missing persons and sexual violence during the war require effective solutions.

“This means that the Serbian government, if it invokes international law, should open military archives and finally pass a fair law for missing persons,” Milosavljevic urged. He added that the new state institute in Kosovo dealing with war crimes should take on the task of listing all victims of sexual violence during the war, regardless of the victims’ identities.

Milosavljevic believes that breaking out of the ethno-nationalist cycle could be achieved through prosecutorial and police cooperation between Serbia and Kosovo in punishing war crimes.

He emphasizes that indicting individuals like Obrad Stevanovic or Goran Radosavljevic Guri, who are currently seen as war analysts on Serbian TV, would be a step toward justice.

“In the case of Kosovo, many crimes against Serbs, such as the one in Staro Gracko (Gracke e Vjeter), remain unpunished to this day, and indictments in that and similar cases would help much more than a commemorative visit by Hashim Thaci, who is currently on trial for war crimes,” he said.

Milosavljevic maintains that education about the wars in Serbia, Kosovo, and the broader ex-Yugoslav republics should be comprehensive and aimed at processing war traumas without exception.

In place of politicians

In Marko Milosavljevic’s words, only solidarity based on principles, not ethnic or class criteria, can save organizations from government attacks.

He notes that the authorities led by Aleksander Vucic [president of Serbia] and Albin Kurti [Kosovo PM]  have created a tiresome narrative, framing a small number of organizations and individuals as enemies who attempt to bridge the divide between the two societies.

For years, Kosovo and Serbia have exchanged blame over who is responsible for the failure to implement the agreements reached since the EU-led dialogue began in 2011, initially focusing on technical issues and later involving top political leaders.

For Milosavljevic, it is crucial to document threats, physical attacks, and false accusations while also building trust among citizens whose human rights are continuously violated.

“Like the thousands of Albanians from southern Serbia whose addresses have been illegally deactivated by the police, or Roma and Ashkali refugees from Kosovo who still have trouble obtaining documents in Serbia,” he said.

Milosavljevic also noted that the cessation of dialogue in Brussels was precipitated by the withdrawal of Serb representatives from Kosovo institutions in November 2022.

He emphasized the importance of establishing a framework for autonomy as soon as possible, along with addressing issues such as the illegal expropriation of land and discrimination against Serbian citizens in Kosovo.

When an armed group of Serbs attacked Kosovo police in north of Kosovo on September 24 last year, killing one police officer, YIHR called for a joint investigation into the attack, but Milosavljevic fears that group leader Milan Radojcic’s freedom is important to the Serbian authorities.

“The terrorist attack in Banjska as well as the violence in Zvečan must be prosecuted to the end, but without pressure on the judiciary, whether it was Serbia or Kosovo, and with respect for fair trial standards as well as the conditions for detention,” he says.

Perception of the other

More than a decade after the war ended, children born during the conflict in both countries have turned 25—a new cadre for politics, art, culture, and civil society. However, the perception of the other remains unclear.

YIHR’s mission is for societies to find a path to reconciliation through youth. Yet, how young people in the two countries perceive each other remains a critical concern.

According to research from the National Youth Council of Serbia, KOMS, the increase in the number of young people in Serbia who support the idea that Serbia should retake Kosovo by military force rosefrom 18 percent in 2020 to over 30 percent in 2023. This drastic increase is a consequence of the collective self-victimization of Serbs and hate speech against Albanians by Serbian authorities, Milosavljevic assesses.

In Kosovo, Milosavljevic refers to a UNDP survey showing that ethno-nationalist narratives have dominated since 2021, with 27 percent of young people from non-majority communities and 13 percent from the Albanian majority seeing the influence of the Serbian government as the primary cause of strained relations. None of the surveyed Kosovo Serbs mentioned this factor.

To address these perceptions, YIHR is implementing the “Cross-Border Internship Program” with YIHR Kosovo, where young people work in civil society organizations for three months, learning about perspectives from the other side.

“It is already a boring picture of the enemy created by the authorities led by Vucic [president of Serbia]and Kurti [Kosovo PM], and refers to a small number of organizations and individuals who try to be a link between the two societies,” he concluded.

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