RRTF: Report December 1997
Outlook for 1998
“Resources, repatriation and minority return”
December 1997
6. Policy Recommendations
Based on the above, and underlining the political and economic nature of the return problem, the RRTF recommends that governments, donors and other relevant actors:
- target resources in the RRTF-designated cluster areas in 1998, thus facilitating minority return and thereby maximising the return of refugees (“Track I”);
- support UNHCR, OHR and other RRTF members to achieve significant minority returns in 1998, by seconding appropriate staff for the brokering, support and management of return movements, mainly at the field level (Track II);
- avoid direct assistance to permanent relocation of displaced persons or refugees;
- provide for increased availability of flexible funding to support unanticipated breakthroughs in minority return movements;
- plan and prepare a “Conference on Return-Related Reconstruction” for February 1998, hosted by the European Commission and World Bank;
- abide by the “RRTF Allocation Mechanism” for reconstruction of socially owned apartments (Annex 4);
- support the RRTF’s Sarajevo return strategy and the Sarajevo Housing Committee (see Annex 5);
- support capacity building efforts of local government authorities enabling them to meet the tasks of return and reconstruction and ensure better co-operation between them;
- ensure that the budgets of local government authorities, at all levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina, provide sufficient operational resources to meet the needs of return and reconstruction and to substantially alter public expenditure patterns to this end.