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AAAS Science and Human Rights Program

Refugee Flow Patterns in Kosovo, March-May 1999

Ethnic Albanian refugees registering at a camp outside Kukes, Albania. Photo by Fritz Scheuren.

Much of the debate about the March - June 1999 war between NATO and Yugoslavia turned on how many people left their homes in particular places and at certain times. Solid information about the flow of refugees out of Kosovo has helped investigators to link patterns in the flow to patterns of NATO bombing, Yugoslav strategic plans for "cleansing" Kosovo, and Yugoslav and irregular troop deployments. At its heart, the debate was about whether refugees left their homes fleeing NATO attacks and fighting between the KLA and Yugoslav forces, or whether they left their homes after being threatened, assaulted, and robbed by Yugoslav police, army, and irregular units.

Related Publications:

"Statistics and Slobodan" by Patrick Ball and Jana Asher in Chance (Fall 2002)
Corrigendum for Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo March-June 1999 (November 2002)
Responses to questions from the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor (February 2002)
Killings and Refugee Flow in Kosovo March-June 1999
A Report to the International Criminal Tribune for the Former Yugoslavia (PDF File)
Political Killings in Kosova/Kosovo, March-June 1999:
A Cooperative Report by the Central and East European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association and the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Policy or Panic?
The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March-May 1999

Data:

Migration
The migration analysis refers to a report by Patrick Ball entitled Policy or Panic?, published by AAAS in 2000. The data include a raw data file keyed from the records of the Albanian border guards in Morina, daily counts by UNHCR and the Albanian government, surveys by Physicians for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, the University of California-Berkeley, and AAAS, and our estimated number of people leaving home on each two-day period.
Killing
The killing analysis refers to a report by Patrick Ball, Wendy Betts, Fritz Scheuren, Jana Dudukovich, and Jana Asher, presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia on 3 January 2002. This report extended work done by AAAS and by ABA/CEELI in an earlier report. In addition to the matched raw data, we present three datasets including our estimates: first, estimates only over time, and second, two versions of aggregated estimates over time and space.
Other data
There are three supplementary datasets that were used in the reports. First, a geographic dataset gives detail on how we handled the categorization and aggregation of places in Kosovo. Second, a dataset on NATO airstrikes describes our information about the statistical patterns of NATO's attacks in Kosovo. Third, we have included the statistical information about KLA activities that we used for our analysis.