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Livia Plaks
At the same time, I realize how exceptional the people in this country are
and I admire their courage in facing the most difficult issues in inter-community
relations. This is something that makes Macedonia stand out in the region. Going
from an open interethnic conflict to an accommodation that brings to the table as
full partners yesterday's enemies is something that indeed requires courage and
vision, and you have exactly these qualities. One must not forget, however, that
the international community had an important influence in these matters by
helping end the conflict and providing incentives for the future. At the same
time, almost everyone in Macedonia realizes that reconciliation was and is
necessary and unavoidable, and that manipulating the past is not the way to
accomplish this.
We must ask ourselves, however, some difficult questions: why was it so
complicated to implement the Framework Agreement? Why did it take such a
long time and why is it still not fully implemented? Where did it succeed and
where did it fail? How strong is the partnership between the two largest
communities in Macedonia? Does OFA represent merely an association of political
convenience, rather than a commitment for political accommodation? Did the
OFA resolve problems or only paper them over?
Does the experience of Macedonia contain any lessons
for other countries in the region or is its experience sui generis?
The OFA example has been cited periodically as sensitive interethnic issues
are being considered in the region. Some of the countries that PER worked in
have looked at the example of Macedonia and have found the comprehensive
Framework Agreement worth considering. I have heard this kind of discussion in
Montenegro and Kosovo, and even in Serbia mostly mentioned by the Albanian
minorities in these countries who looked at the OFA as a promising approach for
minority rights in their countries. However, most people consider that the OFA
was meant to settle an open conflict at which it succeeded extremely well, but
that it did not manage to resolve all issues between the two main ethnic groups in
Macedonia even if it led to some degree of power sharing.
Whether the Ahtisaari agreement in Kosovo that settled the open conflict
there, or the comprehensive minority law in Montenegro borrowed any elements
from the OFA remains to still be analyzed. It can be said that OFA is different
from the Dayton Peace Agreement and Resolution 1244 due to the narrowness of
the scope of those documents. It can also be said that OFA was and remains a
trend setting document regarding minority rights and interethnic relations in
Southeastern Europe. Certainly there are lessons to be learned from OFA (equal
rights for all communities, the importance of decentralization, use of the mother
tongue in education and administration in areas with 20% minorities), lessons
that could improve co-existence in this part of the world. At the end of the day,
the OFA did address the issues at the core of the conflict and ended up creating a
functioning state.
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