Montenegro may be a small republic, but it warmly welcomes refugees

When Croatian troops stormed through the Krajina region in 1995, Jovan and Milica Jojnovic, like most of their Serb neighbors, fled their home. “We thought we would be back in a few days,” Jovan Jojnovic recalls, but instead they have spent the last 3½ years as refugees in one small room at the Hotel Bor in the town of Gusinje in Montenegro. “Look at this room,” Milica wept to one recent visitor. “We eat here, sleep here and everything we own is here. This is not a home. We must go back.”

The elderly Jojnovics have now officially applied for permission to return to their village of Gracac after learning their house was only minimally damaged and is still empty.

Montenegro, which together with Serbia comprises the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is a tiny republic famed locally for its Adriatic beaches and mountain ski resorts. It covers 14,000 square kilometers with a mixed population of 635,000 Montenegrins, Serbs, Muslims and Albanians.

Remarkably, given its small size and population, Montenegro also hosts an estimated 85,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and internally displaced people, mainly from nearby Kosovo – one of the highest percentage concentrations of exiles compared with local citizens anywhere in the world.

Some, like the Jojnovics have spent years in the republic which not only allowed unimpeded entry of refugees and Kosovars, but more remarkably, opened its hotels, hospitals and other accommodation to the new arrivals. Others spend a matter of days – depending on the ebb and flow of the conflict in Kosovo – before returning home.

Events in Kosovo will probably continue to dominate humanitarian actions in Montenegro. UNHCR has maintained a permanent presence and has been providing assistance to refugees in the republic since 1991, with offices in Podgorica, the capital, and others in the towns of Ulcinj and Rozaje, but it was not until Kosovars fleeing the fighting there began to arrive in large numbers that the international community became interested in the region. Today around 22 international humanitarian organizations are working in the republic.

Longtime refugees feel perplexed and angry with this situation. Vladimir is a refugee who says he hardly saw an aid worker until people fleeing the fighting in Kosovo arrived and now he cannot keep track of everyone visiting his hotel. But if all the Kosovars go home from Montenegro – and 12,000 people did in one recent lull in the conflict – he wonders, “Will the world forget about us again?”

Source: Refugees Magazine issue 114 (1999)