Fear in post-turmoil Kenya and Kosovo

From Kenya, news arrive that land is being redrawn along ethnic lines. Meanwhile in Kosovo a swift and innovative UN designed property settlement mechanism has come to terms with a challenging situation. Very few of those 250.000 Serbs and Roma who fled in 1999 are willing to return to their previous homes which have often been reoccupied by low-income Albanian families. The old occupants prefer instead to indirectly manage them (renting or selling them) from afar after making use of the settlement mechanism. How complex and tricky it is to heal deep war wounds and how relative and uncertain can the application of post-conflict justice and fairness sometimes be. Politics, conflict and resettlement are hardly ever straightforward. Only perhaps the will towards greater stability, a will which is too often overshadowed by fear: fear of physical and material harm, fear of economic insecurity.