According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees some 893,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Kosovo since March 1998 - 723,000 of them since March 24th this year, when the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began. The great majority are in the neighbouring states of Albania and Macedonia, where they are stretching humanitarian and financial resources and the local political fabric to the limits. It is essential that all the other European states, Ireland included, come urgently to the help of these - the poorest on the continent - which are desperately in need of our solidarity.
If the reasons for the refugees' expulsion have escaped anyone's notice, the catalogue of evidence accumulated by researchers for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will bring them home. In one horrifying paragraph they are summarised as follows: "Killings, executions, physical abuse, rape, forced displacement, destruction of civilian property and looting . . . sexual assault, including rape of groups of women . . . torture, ill-treatment, harassment, intimidation and the use of groups of people as human shields". UN agencies have reached similar conclusions. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, says: "We cannot forget this in a few months' time. Otherwise, what have we gained from human rights? There must not be impunity".
Mrs Robinson joined other prominent voices in Europe this week in urging a generous response to accommodate refugees who cannot be provided for in the region. She said Ireland must be part of this endeavour. The Government has offered to take 1,000 refugees in the first instance, 140 of whom are expected to arrive next week. Effort is being put into ensuring they have suitable accommodation, language instruction, networks of social contacts and (unlike asylum seekers) the right to seek employment.
This is very welcome as far as it goes; but it may validly be asked whether this State could not afford to take in many more people than planned. Given the horrendous circumstances of those seeking help, they would be sure of a generous response from the public. Other European states have already made much larger commitments, including Germany, which is to take 20,000 refugees.
There should be no room for mealy-mouthed objections saying that Ireland has any less obligation to welcome those expelled from their homes because we are not part of NATO and therefore not party to the bombing campaign that accelerated this disaster. The suffering of the refugees is utterly out of proportion to that caused by NATO's military actions. Whatever one's view of the bombing, whether or when it should stop to allow diplomacy take its course, there will be few to disagree that a central condition for a settlement is that the refugees must be able to return home safely, with compensation and firm rejection of impunity for those responsible.
Ireland, along with its fellow-members of the EU, the UN and the OSCE, shares responsibility for ensuring such conditions are met. In the meantime the human catastrophe demands the most generous response.