PANCEVO, Serbia-Montenegro, Dec 5 (AFP) - Dragana Vitosevic, a nine-year-old Serb girl from Kosovo, has spent almost half her life in a refugee centre in Pancevo, a grim industrial town near the Serbian capital Belgrade.

She is just one of around 700,000 Serbs, those who fled or were driven from their homes during the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Now they make up about 10 percent of Serbia's population.

It is a burgeoning underclass which Serbia cannot afford to support, and now even the United Nations is looking for

1. The Parliamentary Assembly is concerned at the high numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) resulting from various armed conflicts and human rights abuses which have occurred since the early 1990s in more than ten Council of Europe member states.

2. The precise number of the internally displaced population is difficult to determine as governments often do not keep any record of internal movements of their own populations. However, in 2002, it was estimated at between 3.2 and 3.7 million in Europe. In

Jean-Marie Guéhenno Describes 'Remarkable Progress' in UN Efforts; Director, Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, Also Briefs

Mine action was a dynamic component of peacekeeping operations, could help to build confidence during peace processes, and engage parties to a conflict in humanitarian initiatives, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno told the Security Council this morning.

In a briefing on the importance of mine

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is pleased to be able to present, for the second time, a comprehensive overview of the situation of internally displaced persons in the OSCE region to the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. The report was compiled by the NRC's Geneva-based Global IDP Project, the leading international body monitoring IDP situations worldwide, in cooperation with NRC field offices.

This overview clearly shows that internal

Noting that hundreds of thousands of people in Europe are internally displaced and suffering, a U.S. delegate to the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw called for action: "More must be done to find just, realistic and durable solutions," said Dr. Roberta Cohen. "We must address this problem now."

In an October 10 presentation, Cohen observed that Internally Displaced Person's (IDPs) are afforded no protection by the UN Refugee Convention "despite having similar needs to those

Welcome to the Summer issue of the Danish Refugee Council's newsletter for Serbia. DRC is sorry to see the departure of Jette Toft, the Representative of DRC for over two years from 2001 to 2003. Jette, after a brief interlude in Iraq, has committed herself to working from Denmark so as to be able to spend more time with family and friends.

I took over from Jette in March this year and only hope that I can live up to her formidable reputation. Like