Republic of Kosovo Systematic Country Diagnostic
Kosovo is Europe’s youngest country in terms of history and demographics. Both characteristics are defining the country’s overarching development challenges. The country’s geographical position along major trade routes made its territory a pawn in...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/282091494340650708/Kosovo-Systematic-Country-Diagnostic http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26573 |
| Summary: | Kosovo is Europe’s youngest country in
terms of history and demographics. Both characteristics are
defining the country’s overarching development challenges.
The country’s geographical position along major trade routes
made its territory a pawn in the hands of powerful
neighbors, from the Romans and the Ottoman Empire to
Yugoslavia. The considerable amount of self-governance
granted to Kosovo under the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974,
as a province of Serbia, but not as a constituent republic
of the federation, proved politically unsustainable, as
temporary gains in self-rule were reversed by Belgrade
during the Milosevic era. The period after 1989 was
characterized by increased repression and violence,
culminating in war and population expulsion in 1998–99.
During the immediate post conflict period, United Nations
(UN) Security Council Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UN
interim administration. In 2008, Kosovo declared
independence. The transition period of supervised
independence ended four and a half years later.
International recognition has remained partial and has
precluded Kosovo from joining the UN as a full member.4 In
the wake of these developments, public institutions had to
be established from scratch and earn the population’s
acceptance and credibility as their own. The remainder of
this document is organized as follows. Section two presents
the country context, including political and economic
conditions, and discusses factors behind recent trends in
growth, shared prosperity, and poverty. It concludes with a
proposed conceptual framework. Sections three–six describe
key drivers and the principal constraints to growth, shared
prosperity, and poverty reduction. Section seven examines
the priority areas for action. |
|---|