Going home again

Nine years after being chased out of Croatia, some of the half million ethnic Serbian refugees are returning to their homes in that country. As a price of membership in the European Union, Croatia is attempting to undo the ethnic cleansing that led to the expulsion of Serb minority:

The most recent reports indicate that approximately 137,000 Serbian refugees have returned to Croatia. From 12 percent of Croatia's population in 1995, Serbs now account for only 5 percent. That's not good enough yet for the European Union, which Croatia badly wants to join in 2007, when the next wave of enlargement is expected. Creating the conditions needed to enable displaced Croatian Serbs to return is among the most important requirements the EU has told the country it must meet to qualify for entry. At the end of 2003, then-Prime Minister Ivica Racan publicly encouraged Serb refugees to come back, announcing new job-creation schemes, and housing and financial assistance aimed at easing their return.

Still, most ethnic Serbs are not returning to their homes, and the territories of the former Yugoslavia are becoming more, rather than less, ethnically homogeneous. All the same, Croatia's action is an important first step in making itself into a territorial state, doing justice to all its citizens, rather than an ethnic state privileging an ethnic majority at the expense of minorities.