Zero recognition of Kosovo's state during 2022

Zero new recognitions of Kosovo's independence are the result of the work the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other state institutions may have done during 2022. Radio Kosova has asked MPJs are the reasons for lack of recognition and if they have any strategy for securing new recognitions during 2023. Despite insistence and waiting more than a week, the responses by this minister have been missing.

Commenting on the fact that the lack of new recognitions, diplomacy and international negotiation professor Valon Murtezaj, says institutions should work harder and have real strategies.

We have not noticed that Kosovo's current diplomacy has had any clear strategies to increase the number of recognitions. For Kosovo it is very important to recognise from the five European Union member states”, Murtezaj says of Radio Kosovo. “For this, a special strategy and daily and wise communication with all these countries and other countries may have an effect on our country's independence”, Murtezaj says.

International law professor Africa Hoti, also says that recognition security is very challenging. A percentage of failure to succeed in the recognition process belongs to the government, he says, as he gives the main reasons for lack of recognition.

“In the foreign service we have a lack of capacity and lack of actions, and as a result, we have this impasse. Although I want to believe that the biggest problem with recognitions is related to the issue of lack of progress in the Kosovo-Serbia” dialogue, Hoti tells Radio Kosovo.

This has caused certain states to cement their positions and wait for the epilogue of negotiations, so that they can then make the respective decisions”, he says.

Professors Hoti and Murtezaj estimate that the issue of recognition should be MPJD's number one priority.

Israel is the last state to have accepted Kosovo's independence. The recognition by this state was secured by former Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti and former US President Donald Trump at the White House on September 4th 2020, in the presence of Serbia's president, Alexander Vuciq.

The other three states that before Israel had accepted Kosovo's independence are: Madagascar, Barbados and Bangladesh.