The Role of Social Policy in Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Abstract

With the imperative of the political dimension of peace making, international mediators do not often pay attention to social rights. During the failed Rambouillet negotiations to end the Kosovo conflict, which took place in southern France in February 1999, the U.S. and European diplomats sought strong protections of political and civil rights. The Rambouillet Accords that emerged from those mediation sessions, and which was ultimately rejected by the Yugoslav authorities in Belgrade, addressed political rights through powerful autonomouslocal representative political institutions such as a Provincial Assembly, a Presidency of the Assembly, and a “President of Kosovo.” Civil rights were addressed with proposals for reforms of judiciary and legal institutions detailed enough to specify even the standard police uniform. Social rights, however, were relegated to the sidelines. The accords only provided that residents of Kosovo would be able to freely call upon the “institutions of the Republic of Serbia” to express their social rights through “participation in social benefits programs, such as care for war veterans, pensioners, and disabled persons”. Left off the table during negotiations, social rights rarely rise to the top of the agenda for post-conflict reconstruction.