Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a partially recognized country in Southeast Europe. Kosovo lies landlocked in the centre of the Balkans, bordered by Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the southeast, Albania to the southwest, and Montenegro to the west. Most of central Kosovo is dominated by the vast plains and fields of Metohija and the Kosovo field. The Accursed Mountains and Šar Mountains rise in the southwest and southeast, respectively. Its capital and largest city is Pristina.
The United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is the officially mandated mission of the United Nations in Kosovo. The UNMIK describes its mandate as being to "help the United Nations Security Council achieve an overall objective, namely, to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal life for all inhabitants of Kosovo and advance regional stability in the Western Balkans."
The Copenhagen criteria are the rules that define whether a country is eligible to join the European Union. The criteria require that a state has the institutions to preserve democratic governance and human rights, has a functioning market economy, and accepts the obligations and intent of the European Union.
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally and an estimated number of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, the vast majority of languages are minority languages in every country in which they are spoken. Some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, such as Irish in Ireland or the numerous indigenous languages of Bolivia. Likewise, some national languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation.
A municipality is the basic administrative division in Kosovo and constitutes the only level of power in local governance. There are 38 municipalities in Kosovo; 27 of which have an Albanian ethnic majority, 10 Serb and 1 Turkish. After the 2013 Brussels Agreement, signed by the governments of Kosovo and Serbia, an agreement was made to create a Community of Serb Municipalities, which would operate within Kosovo's legal framework. Since 2013, the agreement has not been fulfilled by Kosovo's authorities, calling upon its constitution and "territorial integrity". Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state, but as an autonomous province according to its constitution.
The Preševo Valley is a geopolitical region in southern Serbia, along the border with Kosovo. The valley geographically includes municipalities of Bujanovac and Preševo, and politically also Medveđa. It is home to most of the Albanian community in Serbia, who comprise most of the population with the rest being Serbs and Romani. As of 2022, the area has around 80,000 inhabitants.
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.
The political status of Kosovo, also known as the Kosovo question, is the subject of a long-running political and territorial dispute between the Serbian government and the Government of Kosovo, stemming from the breakup of Yugoslavia (1991–92) and the ensuing Kosovo War (1998–99). In 1999, the administration of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija was handed on an interim basis to the United Nations under the terms of UNSCR 1244 which ended the Kosovo conflict of that year. That resolution reaffirmed the territorial integrity of Serbia over Kosovo but required the UN administration to promote the establishment of 'substantial autonomy and self-government' for Kosovo pending a 'final settlement' for negotiation between the parties.
Serbia has only one nationwide official language, which is Serbian. Other languages spoken in Serbia include Hungarian, Bosnian, Croatian, etc.
The Constitution of Kosovo is the supreme law of the Republic of Kosovo, a territory of unresolved political status. Article four of the constitution establishes the rules and separate powers of the three branches of the government. The unicameral Assembly of the Republic exercises the legislative power, the executive branch led by the President and the Prime Minister which are responsible for implementing laws and the judicial system headed by the Supreme Court.
The official language of North Macedonia is Macedonian, while Albanian has co-official status. Macedonian is spoken by roughly two-thirds of the population natively, and as a second language by much of the rest of the population. Albanian is the largest minority language. There are a further five national minority languages: Turkish, Romani, Serbian, Bosnian, and Aromanian. The Macedonian Sign Language is the country's official sign language.
The Turks in Kosovo, also known as Kosovo Turks, and Kosovan Turks, are the ethnic Turks who constitute a minority group in Kosovo.
Romani people in Kosovo are part of the wider Romani people community, the biggest minority group in Europe. Kosovo Roma speak the Balkan Romani language in most cases, but also the languages that surround them, such as Serbian and Albanian. In 2011 there were 36,694 Romani, Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians living in Kosovo. However, the minorities are unrelated to each other and were only put together based on appearance.
The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence, which proclaimed the Republic of Kosovo to be a state independent from Serbia, was adopted at a meeting held on 17 February 2008 by 109 out of the 120 members of the Assembly of Kosovo, including the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, and by the President of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu. 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 abbreviated to Kosmet or KiM, is an autonomous province defined by the Constitution of Serbia that occupies the southernmost part of Serbia. The territory is the subject of an ongoing political and territorial dispute between Republic of Serbia and the partially recognised Republic of Kosovo, the latter of which has control over the territory. Its claimed administrative capital and largest city is Pristina.
A proposed Community of Serb Municipalities, or Association of Serb Municipalities, is a planned grouping of ethnic Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo.
The Kosovo Agency of Statistics monitors various demographic features of the population of Kosovo, such as population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Censuses, normally conducted at ten-year intervals, record the demographic characteristics of the population. According to the first census conducted after the 2008 declaration of independence in 2011, the permanent population of Kosovo had reached 1,810,366.
The Constitution of Croatia in its preamble defines Croatia as a nation state of ethnic Croats, a country of traditionally present communities that the constitution recognizes as national minorities and a country of all its citizens. National minorities explicitly enumerated and recognized in the Constitution are Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romani, Romanians, Istro-Romanians ("Vlachs"), Turks and Albanians. Article 12 of the constitution states that the official language in Croatia is Croatian, but also states that in some local governments another language and Cyrillic or some other script can be introduced in official use.
Albanization (US) or Albanisation (UK) of names is Albanization of non-Albanian personal names and toponyms in Albania, Kosovo, western North Macedonia and Montenegro. Right after the Second World War Albanian communist authorities required non-Albanians to Albanize their names. In 1966 the Albanian Communist Party issued a decree aimed to wipe out "traces of the non-Albanian population" in places where significant Slavic minorities still lived. In 1968 one of the demands of Albanian nationalistic demonstration on Kosovo was to remove Serbian Orthodox name Metohija from the name of the province. On 23 September 1975 the Albanian Communist Party issued "Decree #5339" on the Albanization of all place-names and personal names which ordered citizens to give "modern revolutionary (Illyrian) names" to their children, while non-Albanian toponyms or ones that had religious connotations all over the country were Albanized to better suit the "state ideology".
United Nations Administered Kosovo refers to the period between 1999 and 2008 when the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo was directly responsible for the governance of Kosovo. This period began on 10 June 1999 with the passing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 and effectively ended on 17 February 2008 with the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo.
