In the 1990s Croatia cared for about 350,000 displaced persons and organised their return after regaining control of Serb-occupied areas in 1995, the head of the Croatian Department for Displaced Persons and Refugees, Lovre Pejkovic, told the conference.
Pejkovic said that the return of displaced persons had been mainly financed by Croatia itself, using funds from the national budget, and added that there were still about 8,000 displaced persons in the country.
One of the topics discussed was the problem of displaced Roma. The head of the National Council of Roma of Serbia and Montenegro, Vitomir Mihajlovic, spoke of displaced Roma from Kosovo, where there were 98,000 Roma before 1995, while now there are about 5,000.
Many of Kosovo's Roma left for Serbia and Montenegro, while about 50,000 of them travelled to Western Europe. Those in Serbia and Montenegro do not have appropriate accommodation, have no financial resources or health care, and their children are not included in the education system, Mihajlovic said.
Mihajlovic proposed that the OSCE set up a database on displaced Roma in order to help in resolving their problems.