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Manchester Aid to Kosovo (MAK) is a Manchester based charity dedicated to providing aid and support to the peoples of Kosovo.
| | This article does not cite any sources .(July 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
Manchester Aid to Kosovo (MAK) is a Manchester based charity dedicated to providing aid and support to the peoples of Kosovo.
MAK was started by five Manchester men in a pub. Their response to the unfolding reports of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, caught the imagination of the Greater Manchester people. Within two weeks a convoy of 300 tonnes of aid was on its way from Manchester to Kosovo Albanians in refugee camps in Albania. 850,000 Kosovo Albanians fled the province. Within a year MAK transported a 1,000 tons of crisis aid to the region; MAK is committed to supporting the recovery of the people of Kosovo in both Kosovo and in the United Kingdom. Kosovo is administrated by the United Nations.
MAK has partnered with InterVol, a student-led international volunteering charity, to provide international volunteers for projects in the Podujevo region of Kosovo.
Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a partially-recognised state in Southeast Europe, subject to a territorial dispute with the Republic of Serbia.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic-Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of Greater Albania due to the presence of a vast ethnic majority of Albanians in the region, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.
Greater Albania is an irredentist concept that seeks to unify the lands that many Albanians consider to form their national homeland, based on claims on the present-day or historical presence of Albanian populations in those areas. In addition to the existing Albania, the term incorporates claims to regions in the neighbouring states, the areas include Kosovo, the Preševo Valley of Serbia, territories in southern Montenegro, northwestern Greece, and a western part of North Macedonia.
The history of Kosovo is intertwined with the histories of its neighbouring regions. The name "Kosovo" is derived from the Kosovo Plain, where the Battle of Kosovo was fought between a coalition of Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire. Kosovo's modern history can be traced to the Ottoman Sanjak of Prizren, of which parts were organised into Kosovo Vilayet in 1877. In antiquity, Dardania covered the area, which formed part of the larger Roman province of Moesia in the 1st century AD. In the Middle Ages, the region became part of the Bulgarian Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Serbian medieval states. It was then conquered by the Ottoman Empire an exact 70 years after the Battle of Kosovo. In 1913 the Kosovo Vilayet was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia, which in 1918 formed Yugoslavia. Kosovo gained autonomy in 1963 under Josip Broz Tito's direction, an autonomy which was significantly extended by Yugoslavia's 1974 Constitution, but lost its autonomous institutions in 1990. In 1999 UNMIK stepped in.
Kosovo Police is the policing law enforcement agency of Kosovo.
Workers' Aid for Bosnia was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1993, after a call by the Campaign Against Fascism in Europe (CAFE). Sixty people – socialists, trade unionists and Bosnian refugees – met to discuss how to organise solidarity with those people in ex-Yugoslavia defending a united, multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina. Workers' Aid was supported by the International Socialist Group, the USFI, and the Workers Revolutionary Party. However, there was rivalry between these groupings which did not help the solidarity project.
The Vilayet of Kosovo was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Peninsula which included the current territory of Kosovo and the western part of the Republic of North Macedonia. The areas today comprising Sandžak (Raška) region of Serbia and Montenegro, although de jure under Ottoman control, were in fact under Austro- Hungarian occupation from 1878 until 1909, as provided under Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin. Uskub (Skopje) functioned as the capital of the province and the mid way point between Istanbul and its European provinces. Uskub's population of 32,000 made it the largest city in the province, followed by Prizren, also numbering at 30,000.
The Albanians of Kosovo, also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovar Albanians or simply Kosovars constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo.
Kosovo during the 20th century history has largely been characterised by wars and major population displacements. The region formed a part of numerous entities, some internationally recognised, others not.
NorthKosovo, also known as the Ibar Kolašin, is a region in the northern part of Kosovo, composed of four municipalities with ethnic Kosovo Serbs majority: North Mitrovica, Leposavić, Zvečan and Zubin Potok.
Aid Convoy is a British charitable organisation running and supporting various humanitarian aid projects, mostly in Eastern Europe. Its aims are achieved primarily by means of running convoys.
The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence was adopted on 17 February 2008 by the Assembly of Kosovo. In a meeting attended by 109 of the total 120 members, the assembly unanimously declared Kosovo to be independent from Serbia, while all 11 representatives of the Serb minority boycotted the proceedings. This minority was found to be common in the northern District of Mitrovica, bordering Serbia. It was the second declaration of independence by Kosovo's Albanian-majority political institutions; the first was proclaimed on 7 September 1990.
The Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, commonly known as Kosovo and Metohija or Kosovo for short and abbreviated as KiM or Kosmet, refers to the region of Kosovo as defined in the Constitution of Serbia. The territory of the province is disputed between Serbia and the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, the latter of which has de facto control. The region had functioned as part of Serbia for most of the period between 1912 and 1999.
Albania–Kosovo relations refer to the current, cultural and historical relations of Albania and Kosovo. Albania has an embassy in Pristina and Kosovo has an embassy in Tirana. There are 1.6 million Albanians living in Kosovo - officially 92.93% of Kosovo's entire population - and Albanian is an official language of Kosovo. Likewise, the peoples of the two countries share common traditions and folklore.
Kosovo–United Arab Emirates relations are foreign relations between Kosovo and the United Arab Emirates.
InterVol is an international volunteering charity based in the United Kingdom. InterVol support poverty reduction, conservation and education projects with partner organisations in developing countries. Their projects in the United Kingdom are based at the University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, Lancaster University,, University of Nottingham and Oxford Brookes University.
Kosovo within communist Yugoslavia had the lowest rate of crime in the whole country. Following the Kosovo War (1999), the region had become a significant center of organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking and organ theft besides ongoing ethnic conflict between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovan Serbs. The large Kosovar diaspora which had built up in Western Europe during the 1990s combined with the political instability created ideal conditions for Kosovo to become "Europe's crime hub"; well into the 2000s, Kosovo remained associated with both ethnic conflict and organized crime. A Kosovo Police service has been built up under UN administration beginning in 1999, reaching its operational force of 7,000 officers in 2004, and further expanded to 9,000 by 2010. The deplorable crime rate led to an additional deployment of civilian law enforcement resources of the European Union to Kosovo under the name of European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo in 2008. Originally scheduled for two years, the duration of the deployment was extended twice, as of September 2012 scheduled to last until 2014.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1199, adopted on 23 September 1998, after recalling Resolution 1160 (1998), the Council demanded that the Albanian and Yugoslav parties in Kosovo end hostilities and observe a ceasefire.
Medaid4kids is an Irish Charity founded in 2003 by Bob Jones and Des Grant, that specialises in donating medical equipment and supplies to hospitals and orphanages internationally. The charity ships medical equipment that becomes surplus to requirements in hospitals from Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to hospitals worldwide. Medaid4kids established an international donation programme so that medical equipment is no longer destroyed when its use in Irish hospitals has elapsed.
Northwestern Albania was struck by a strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake with an epicentre 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west-southwest of Mamurras, at 03:54 CET (UTC+1) on 26 November 2019. The earthquake lasted at least 50 seconds and was felt in Albania's capital Tirana, and in places as far away as Taranto and Belgrade, 370 kilometres (230 mi) northeast of the epicentre. The maximum felt intensity was VIII (Severe) on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale. A total of 51 people were killed in the earthquake, with about 3,000 injured. It was the second earthquake to strike the region in the space of three months. It was the strongest earthquake to hit Albania in more than 40 years, its deadliest earthquake in 99 years and the world's deadliest earthquake in 2019.