Educational Alternatives, Volume 13, 2015

Abstract: After the declaration of its Independence in 2008, Kosovo was involved in an important transition process regarding the strengthening of independence and state sovereignty, regarding the establishment of democratic state institutions as a precondition to ensure a stable and multi-ethnic society. One of the essential promises for such a goal to be achieved was and remains the involvement of minorities regardless of the ethnical group they belong to, within the constitutional and legal system o the country as well as their integration in government structures, either local or central. According to the official data published in 2014 by the Kosovo Statistics Agency, the overall number of people living in Kosovo is 1.815.606 inhabitants.1 The vast majority of this overall number is composed of Albanians with approximately 90%, whereas the other art, is composed mainly by Serbs with 5%, who mainly reside in Serb enclaves, as well as other ethnical groups composing 5% of the total number. It is worth mentioning that the majority of representatives of the Serb community lives in the north part of Kosovo, including the municipalities of Leposaviq, Zveçan and North Mitrovica, or is focused in mono-ethnical enclaves within the territory of Kosovo, through various municipalities. The legal framework related to the protection of the rights of all ethnical groups living in Kosovo is strongly supported by a wide series of central level institutions that carry the primary responsibility for the drafting and implementation of these legal acts serving for the protection and advancing of the rights of communities. In this sense, after the establishment of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Kosovo, in 2002 there was established the counseling office for good governance, human rights, equal possibilities and gender issues, which has functioned within the Office of the Prime Minister and aimed to monitor and provide advise for ministries of that scope, regarding the protection of human rights, encouraging equal possibilities, related to gender issues as well as the advancing of good governance. Consequently, in 2007, within each Ministry of the Government of Kosovo there are established special units for human rights, that their role has not exclusively been only the monitoring of the compliance of policies, legislation and activities lead by these institutions at international standards in the field of human rights protection, byt also the supervision with regard to the rate of representation of non-majority communities in Kosovo politics and institutional life.