Political status of Kosovo

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 (and previously, Yugoslav) 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 Serbia's territorial integrity 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.

The UN-sponsored talks began in February 2006, and though no agreement was reached between the parties, a proposal from UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari was presented in May 2007, which recommended 'supervised independence' for the province. After several weeks of discussions at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European members of the United Nations Security Council formally 'discarded' a draft resolution backing the Ahtisaari Plan on 20 July 2007, as they had failed to secure Russian backing.^{[failed verification]}

On 17 February 2008, representatives of the people of Kosovo, acting outside the frameworks of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) established by the UN governance mission, issued a declaration of independence, formally establishing the Republic of Kosovo as a sovereign and independent country. While Kosovo's declaration of independence was subsequently brought before the International Court of Justice, the latter eventually ruled that the declaration did not violate international law, arguing that the signatory authors represented the expression of the nationwide will of the People of Kosovo, rather than the Assembly of Kosovo under the umbrella of UN resolution 1244.

Following the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and the Treaties of London and Bucharest, which led to the Ottoman Empire's loss of most of the Balkans, Kosovo was governed as an integral part of the Kingdom of Serbia, while the Kingdom of Montenegro governed its western part, known as Metohija. In 1918, Montenegro was united with Serbia, first becoming an integral part of the Kingdom of Serbia, and shortly thereafter, under Serbian rule, joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSHS), recognized in 1919 and 1920 at the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nations, and gaining a Constitution in 1921. Demonstrations from Kosovo Albanians demanding union with the Principality of Albania were suppressed by the Royal Yugoslav Army. In 1922, the historical entities were abolished by a state commission, and 33 new administrative oblasts (regions) ruled from the centre were instituted. In 1926, the border dispute with the Albanian Republic was resolved with most of the Gora region remaining within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

In 1929, the Kingdom (renamed formally to "Yugoslavia") was restructured into nine large provinces called banovinas (banates), formalized by a new Constitution in 1931. Their borders were intentionally drawn so that they would not correspond either to boundaries between ethnic groups or to pre-World War I state borders. Most of Kosovo was allocated to the Zeta Banate and smaller bits to the Moravian and Vardar Banates.

The first Constitution of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (later renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY) established Kosovo-Metohija and the northern region of Vojvodina as autonomous provinces within the People's Republic of Serbia. It also promoted the Vardar region of southern Serbia to the status of a separate republic, the People's Republic of Macedonia. The constitution, adopted on 31 January 1946, stated that "The People's Republic of Serbia includes the autonomous province of Vojvodina and the autonomous Kosovo-Metohijan region." It did not spell out the rights and scope of the autonomous provinces, instead stating that this was a matter to be "determined by the constitution of the [parent] republic."

The later Constitution of the SFRY, adopted on 7 April 1963, again provided for republics to "found autonomous provinces in accordance with the constitution in areas with distinctive national characteristics or in areas with other distinguishing features, on the basis of the express will of the population of this area." Within the Socialist Republic of Serbia, "there are the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija, established in 1945 by the decision of the People's Assembly of the People's Republic of Serbia in accordance with the express will of the population of these areas." The details of the rights and scope of the provinces were, again, reserved to the republics' constitutions.

The 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, at the time the world's longest, greatly changed the constitutional setup within Yugoslavia. It increased the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina, and gave both autonomous provinces de facto veto power in the Serbian and Yugoslav parliaments, as changes to their status could not be made without the consent of the two Provincial Assemblies. It also granted equal status to the Serbian, Albanian, and Turkish languages and alphabets within Kosovo.