A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Competing Nationalisms

Kosovo was an important part of the medieval Serbian state. Ever since, it has been the focus of conflict between two competing nationalisms:  Albanian and Serb. 

During the Turkish occupation, most Albanians converted to Islam and found ways to coexist with the Ottoman regime. Many Serbs emigrated to northern parts of Serbia or to areas under control of the Hapsburgs. 

Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Albanians hoped that Kosovo (as well as other adjacent areas with Albanian populations) would be united with the newly formed state of Albania. Instead these areas were divided between Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. After World War II, Kosovo became a province within the Federal Republic of Serbia, which was part of Yugoslavia at the time.

Approximately 3.2 million Albanians presently live in Albania, 100,000 in Serbia, 50,000 in Montenegro, between 500,000 and 700,000 in Macedonia, and 1.8 million in Kosovo.

During the twentieth century, of the overall population in Kosovo, the Serbian population fell from 50 percent to 10 percent. (After World War II, there was a period of harsh anti-Albanian repression under Tito, butchanges in the Yugoslav constitution established in 1974 granted Kosovo broad autonomy.)