Human Rights and Nationalism

Before we begin with our review of the Kosovo conflict, we must reflect for a moment on the conflict between Nationalism and Human Rights law. As Elizabeth Kiss eloquently states, "Nationalism is a form of political consciousness which revolves around identification with and allegiance to a nation, [which] is a group whose members believe themselves to have a shared culture and history and in fact generally shareàlanguage, ethnicity, [and] race" (1). Kiss goes on to note that a main problem in our historical understanding of Nationalism has been the confusion between a nation and a state: in many instances, such as Eastern Europe, states are actually a melange of di

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situation became an armed conflict, and with it the nature of the human rights issues. The Geneva conventions make an important distinction between international conflict (conflicts between separate countries) and internal conflicts within one country (4). This highlights the distinction between states and nationsùthis conflict was an internal one within the state of Serbia, but it involved different nationalities, Serbians and Kosovars. As the war in Yugoslavia began, the international community recoiled at reports of ethnic cleansing and massive human rights violations by Serbian troops. According to Amnesty International, the first bout of atrocities occurred in February and March of 1998 in the Drenica region of central Kosovo. Three villages were attacked by elements of the Serbian special police, leading to 84 fatalities of which at least 24 were women and children (5). This was a watershed moment in the conflict, leading to the escalation of what had been sporadic fighting as well touching off a mass exodus from Yugoslavia of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars. As the conflict began to intensify, the Yugoslavian government began to perpetrate a vast slate of less sensationalist human rights abuses. Among the infrac
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