“ The Roma case is urgent. Children’s lives and developmental potentials are at risk. Their future is in jeopardy… A prompt and concerted action is in dire need.”

-- Gerry McWeeney, Healthy Environment Programme Manager
World Health Organization (WHO), October 22, 2004

Rescue Children from Contaminated Camp / Kosovo - Victory

In northern Kosovo, 500 people live in camps maintained by the United Nations, where they are continually exposed to severe lead poisoning. The most recent (2005) World Health Organization study in these camps found that 88 percent of children under age six had blood lead levels in the highest category, described as “acute medical emergency.” Even the lowest measured blood lead level was three times higher than the permissible level for children (10 ug/dL). Health impacts of lead poisoning in children are irreversible. They include brain damage, mental retardation, behavior problems, anemia, liver and kidney damage, hearing loss and death. Blood lead levels in the Kosovo children may have already lowered their IQs by 20 points or more. At least one child’s death is attributed to lead poisoning; there may be many others.

In 1999 the UN established the camps for Internally Displaced Persons near the Trepca mine and smelter, known for producing both valuable metals and high volumes of lead-contaminated waste. Experts (then and now) urged immediate evacuation of the children and pregnant women, who are most vulnerable to lead poisoning. In 2000, Bernard Kouchner, a physician and the first Special Representative for the UN Secretary-General in Kosovo, said it would be negligent to keep children and pregnant women in the camps “even for one more day.”  

Now more than five years have passed, and studies completed by the World Health Organization continually underscore the urgency of Kouchner’s recommendation. In 2004, WHO found soil contamination in the camps “above safe levels for gardening, children playing and human habitation,” and urged that the population be removed from the camps on an emergency basis. In 2005, a WHO expert described the camps as “one of the most serious lead-related environmental health disasters in the world and in history.” The International Committee of the Red Cross also demanded that the camps be evacuated.

Why has the United Nations taken no action based on these reports and demands? Why are 500 people still living on lead-contaminated soils and breathing lead-contaminated dust from huge tailings piles?

The European Roma Rights Centre says there is only one explanation: racism. The refugees at the Kablare, Zitkovac and Cesmin Lug camps are Roma – an ethnic group commonly called “Gypsies.”

Since the 12^th century, as the Roma people migrated eastward from India to Europe, they were met everywhere with mistrust, rejection, persecution, banishment, enslavement and attempted extermination. A third of Europe’s Roma population was murdered in the Holocaust, but that is not the most recent pogrom against them. In 1999, when NATO action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ended, ethnic Albanians returned from abroad and violently expelled approximately four-fifths of Kosovo’s resident Romani population. Romani people were kidnapped, abused, murdered and raped. Whole Romani settlements were burned to the ground, and NATO forces did not interfere to stop this “ethnic cleansing.”

Racist sentiment against the Roma is so pervasive that the U.N. has been able to keep the Roma in lead-contaminated camps for six years without risking a huge public outcry. It is time now for that outcry to come from every corner of the globe.

More information about this issue.

Make a donation for this campaign.

Write a letter for this campaign.

Campaign partner(s) and credits.