BALKANS CRISIS MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH IN KOSOVO
ICRC relief, protection, tracing and mine-awareness delegates have begun making joint field trips to isolated communities in Kosovo in order to provide a range of services designed to meet the most immediate needs of the inhabitants.
The first such trip took place last week, when delegates went to Junik, a village near the Albanian border which is still difficult for many organizations to reach and where phone lines are down. They found 2,000 people who were in urgent need of food and anxious for news of their relatives. The presence of mines in the area is also a problem and has reportedly already claimed the lives of two young children.
In response to the needs expressed by the villagers, relief delegates distributed wheat flour and family parcels while the tracing team, equipped with three satellite phones, helped people call their relatives abroad. Other delegates distributed leaflets about the dangers posed by mines.
"This approach is probably the most efficient way of tackling all the different needs at once", said relief delegate Matthias Mollet. "Instead of telling people that we were only bringing food and that we would have to take their tracing and protection requests back to Pristina for someone else to deal with, we were able to handle everything on the spot. It is also indicative of the wide range of problems currently faced by the population."
Further information: Daloni Carlisle, ICRC Pristina, tel.: ++ 381 63 344 164 Amanda Williamson, ICRC Geneva, tel.: ++ 4122 730 26 78
New on the ICRC Public Server - http://www.icrc.org : - Update 99/01 on ICRC activities in Colombia on behalf of internally displaced people, dated 13.07.99
During the weekend of 17 - 18 July 1999, for all information please call the press officer on duty Corinne Adam, on (mobile) 41 79 202 36 80