Kosovars live on euro a day

As diplomats continue talks in a bid to agree on the future of the breakaway province of Kosovo, people living there continue to struggle for survival. Eight years after war, 40 per cent of the province's population live close to the poverty line.

There are about nine families living in the community up in the hills near the northern border of Kosovo. Many of the villagers are sick. They have little in the way of transport and the closest shop is a two-hour journey. Many do not have running water in their houses.
 
Dmitry Barach embarks on a mission to fetch water every day. The old man had to sell his last cow to pay for a 1,000 euro operation on his leg and he still finds it hard to walk.
 
“We have no water, bad roads, life is so difficult. Officially, we’re living in the 21st century but really it’s like the 17th. We probably have the same quality of life our great-great-grandparents had,” says Dmitry Barach, a local resident.
 
Radmila Barach has been bedridden for twelve years after an operation that went wrong. Her husband Vucosav, who’s also sick, has to do everything for her.
 
In winter the village is completely cut off from the world, and when it snows even the electricity doesn’t work.
 
For this little community the future of Kosovo is irrelevant – they’re more concerned with what they’ll eat tomorrow.
 
The local municipality gives each person in the village 40 euros per month – just over one euro a day to live from hand to mouth.
 
Though eight years have passed since the end of the war, poverty is rife in Kosovo and it affects all the ethnic groups – Serbs, ethnic Albanians and the Roma people.
 
Many young ethnic Albanians say they want to leave Kosovo, whether it's independent or not.
 
“I hope it would be better if we get independence but I’m going to leave whatever happens. Young people just can’t find work. When they go to a cafe they can’t even afford to buy a coffee. They don’t even have a euro in their pockets,” confessed an Albanian boy.
 
The World Bank’s poverty assessment classifies almost 40 per cent of Kosovo’s population as 'poor' which means they live on less than one-and-a-half euros a day. Fifteen per cent of the population live below the extreme poverty line on under a euro a day.