Kosovo 2014

Yearbook 2014

Kosovo. Kosovo population in 2020 is estimated at 1.8 million. political contradictions led to the formation of a new party in March by President Jakup Krasniqi and former Prime Minister Fatmir Limaj, both former members of Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi’s party PDK (Kosovo Democratic Party). They named their new party the Kosovo Initiative (Nisma).

The government raised pensions and salaried employees by 25% in March. The opposition accused the prime minister of using public funds to strengthen his own cards ahead of the parliamentary elections expected later this year.

Following strong pressure from the EU, Parliament voted in April to set up an EU-backed special court to investigate suspicions that the former Kosovo Albanian UCK guerrilla had stolen bodies from dead Serbs during the 1998-99 war. Among the suspects were several high-ranking people. The government wanted to create an army of 5,000 men by upgrading and expanding the light-armed force that existed in the country. However, the change required a constitutional change. The Serbian minority opposed the proposal, which contributed to the dissolution of parliament and elections announced slightly earlier than expected.

In the June 8 election, the PDK won again with 30% of the vote, while the largest opposition party LDK (Kosovo Democratic Alliance) received 25%. None of PDK’s former coalition partners exceeded the 5 percent barrier. Now LDK formed an alliance with two small parties and expressed its desire to take over the government. But neither party managed to get the support of a majority in Parliament. The country ended up in a serious political crisis around how the constitution would be interpreted and who had the right to even try to form government.

According to topb2bwebsites, only in December had a solution been reached. The two largest parties formed government, with LDK’s leader Isa Mustafa as new prime minister and Thaçi as foreign minister.

Population, society and rights

The Kosovar population, estimated at nearly two million people, is now made up of a clear Albanian majority (92%) and numerous ethnic minorities (8%): ​​Serbs, Bosnians and Gorans, Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians and Turks. During the NATO bombings in 1999, more than 800,000 Albanians fled the country; at the end of the conflict and following the withdrawal of the Yugoslav forces, most of them returned to Kosovo, while about 235,000 people including Serbs and members of other minorities emigrated to Serbia and other European countries. Even today, Kosovo hosts around 17,000 displaced persons and around 50,000 refugees, mainly from Serbia. The Serbs, a minority in the country, are however the majority in the provinces north of the Ibar River and are located in some enclaves in other provinces with an Albanian prevalence. The northern area of ​​the country does not recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo and enjoys a strong de facto autonomy.

the relations between it and the Kosovan central authorities, its legal capacity, as well as its livelihood and economic financing. However, the lack of recognition of Kosovo in theUnesco (November 2015) and the rise of vibrant social protests against the normalization dialogue with Serbia, also fomented by nationalist parliamentary opposition, prompted the local authorities first not to give effect to the agreement and subsequently, through a decision of the Court constitutional agreement of Kosovo, to temporarily suspend (until 12 January 2016) the implementation of the same agreement with Serbia.

In addition to Albanian, the Constitution recognizes Serbian as an official language and provides for some rules to protect ethnic minorities, which in some respects are in fact still discriminated against. On the religious level, the Albanian majority is predominantly Muslim (only 3% of Albanians are Catholic) and so are the Bosnian, Goran and Turkish communities; the Serbian minority is predominantly Christian Orthodox. Although the Constitution protects religious freedom, since 1999 attacks have often gone unpunished on Serbian Orthodox places of worship. The World Bank (Wb) estimates that school attendance is relatively high, with about nine out of ten students enrolled in primary school and three out of four in secondary school, even if the quality of education is not homogeneous. There are wide disparities between urban and rural areas and in some areas traditional values ​​are an obstacle to women’s education, so much so that the rate of schooling for women in secondary school is 20% lower than for men.

Corruption, organized crime and illicit trafficking – endemic throughout the country – are among the most serious problems facing Kosovo. Despite the signing of the Association and Stabilization Agreement (ASA), signed by Prime Minister Mustafa with the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the EU, Federica Mogherini (27 October 2015), and although the 2015 report of the Directorate-General for Enlargement of the European Commission also records an overall improvement in the Kosovar situation, Brussels stressed the weakness of national institutions, the need to limit political influences on the latter and the urgency to fight corruption and organized crime. Disconnected from this context, but which have emerged more and more evidently in recent years, are also the issues related to the issues of illegal immigration and jihadism, which see Kosovo as a logistical hub for these phenomena.

Finally, inadequate protection of property rights hampers economic development and the consolidation of the rule of law. Freedom of expression is effectively limited due to the lack of security, particularly with regard to ethnic minorities.