Our history

Dialogue with the international administration

Kosovo was then under the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). We brought Kosovo’s political and community leaders, civil society and experts into direct dialogue with the international administration on questions affecting everyday life. Working groups and public forums developed proposals on civil registration, justice, health, education and economic reconstruction, connecting local concerns with those holding authority to act.

Turning the standards agenda into legislation

As Kosovo pursued the standards-before-status agenda, we worked with the Prime Minister’s Office and line ministries to turn commitments into legislation and government action. ECMI brought local drafting groups, international legal expertise and public consultation into the process.

Our legislative drafting and public consultation covered five bills that subsequently progressed to Assembly approval. This work ranged from health insurance and the bar examination to theatres, nature conservation and wine. We also supported government reporting and coordination on human and minority rights.

Shaping Kosovo’s position on community rights

During the status negotiations, we worked with the Kosovo delegation to bring minority-community voices into its deliberations. ECMI helped establish and support the early Community Consultative Council, organised consultations and provided the legal expertise and drafting support for Kosovo’s position on protecting communities and their members.

The community-rights framework developed through this work was largely taken up by the Kosovo delegation and informed the community-protection provisions of the Ahtisaari settlement proposal. This connected community participation directly with the protections being negotiated for Kosovo’s future.

Embedding protections in the Constitution and laws

We helped draft the Law on the Use of Languages in 2005, before its adoption in 2006. As the settlement’s protections were translated into Kosovo’s constitutional framework, ECMI contributed to drafting the chapter on fundamental rights and freedoms and played a leading drafting role in the chapter on the rights of communities and their members.

Following the declaration of independence in 2008, during the period of supervised independence, ECMI helped finalise the special Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Communities and Their Members from the draft it had prepared. Alongside anti-discrimination legislation, this became a cornerstone of Kosovo’s community-rights framework.

Building institutions for community rights

We helped establish and support the operation of the Office for Community Affairs within the Prime Minister’s Office and the permanent Consultative Council for Communities within the Presidency. The Council gave community consultation a new constitutional place in public decision-making. Our support covered mandates, secretariats, procedures, working methods and consultation.

From 2008, we also supported Kosovo’s decentralisation process. Outreach, dialogue between government institutions and communities, and work with Municipal Preparation Teams helped explain the process and its practical implications as new Serb-majority municipalities were established.

ECMI later contributed to the reform that established the Office of the Language Commissioner in 2012, building on the Law on the Use of Languages. We then worked with the Office on monitoring tools and practical implementation, including a joint pilot at the Assembly of Kosovo in 2013.

In 2012, we opened our Mitrovica North office. It supported trust-building between Albanian and Serb communities and cooperation with local communities and the Mitrovica North Administrative Office, strengthening ECMI’s presence across linguistic and geographic divides.

A Kosovo-registered organisation

On 24 April 2009, ECMI Kosovo became a locally registered non-governmental organisation with its own board, management and programmes. The organisation carried forward the work and relationships developed since 2001.

Making education and language rights usable

As the legal and institutional framework took shape, our work increasingly focused on implementation and people’s access to rights. We supported the comprehensive review of Serbian-language curricula and textbooks, developed practical education-inclusion guidance with UNICEF, and helped schools and municipalities address exclusion and dropout. Albanian and Serbian language courses helped municipal officials work across language barriers. In 2013, alongside CLARD, we supported parents in beginning the court challenge to school segregation in Gjakova.

Advancing women’s safety, participation and health

Research with CLARD identified delays in domestic-violence protection orders. We combined economic support for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian women with community-based paralegal assistance and work against gender-based violence. Research and advocacy addressed women’s participation in decisions; cooperation on reproductive health expanded the work with women and health providers.

A major 2014–2015 programme with minority women strengthened community-based support against gender-based violence. Training and experience also developed ECMI’s approach to confidentiality, coded case recording and identity protection, with women’s safety and decisions guiding the work.

Opening a route to using qualifications

Having designed the legal route for diploma verification, ECMI Kosovo was authorised by the Government to act as intermediary in the mechanism. We helped turn that route into an operating process for graduates of Serbian-language institutions seeking to use their qualifications for employment and professional opportunities. The work continues today.

Making civil documentation accessible

Our original research exposed the barriers facing people who relied on Serbian-system documents. At the invitation of the US Embassy, we joined discussions with the Ministry of Internal Affairs on applying experience from diploma verification to civil documentation. The research, dialogue and subsequent practical support helped address access to registration and public services.

Bringing rights assistance closer to communities

Community-based legal assistance helped people address birth registration, school admission, language recognition and public-service problems. Work with local organisations, paralegals and responsible institutions connected individual concerns with practical remedies.

Longer-term advocacy also reached an important result: in June 2022, the Court of Appeals upheld compensation in the Gjakova school-segregation case after unlawful discrimination had been established. ECMI and CLARD had supported the parents from the beginning of the proceedings.

Connecting livelihoods with the green transition

Building on earlier work with informal waste collectors, we brought collectors, municipalities and businesses together around safer livelihoods, recycling and better environmental services. Cross-border cooperation added research, equipment, training and environmental learning with partners in Kosovo and Montenegro.

Removing barriers to property and fair work

Community discussions and university workshops made property-registration and inheritance information more accessible, including in Serbian-speaking communities. Work on migrant workers’ rights brought institutional training, civil-society support, research and guidance together around recruitment, contracts and fair treatment at work.