Atifete Jahjaga



Born on April 20th 1975, Atifete Jahjaga made history as the third president and the first female and first non partisan president of Kosovo. She began her career studying law in her native country before moving to the United Kingdom to pursue a certificate program in police management and criminal law. Upon the completion of this program, she returned to Kosovo where she enrolled in the Kosovo Police Academy, quickly making her away up from officer to a major general and eventually Deputy Director of the Kosovo Police. After a political crisis in 2011 and the resignation of the previous president, she was elected president on 7th April 2011. Her primary focuses during her political tenure were to strength the democratic institutions in Kosovo and also the increase the international recognition of Kosovo, which was still a relatively new country and reeling from the Kosovo War. She also established the National Council for Survivors of Sexual Assault during the war in Kosovo, which provided legal remedies to survivors and helped to integrate them back into society. On foreign affairs, she mostly concentrated on EU integration and building Western ties with European countries and the United States. She was in office when the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia, which claims Kosovo as part of the Serbia, began to meet to normalize relations in 2013. Atifete Jahjaga left office in 2016 and is now continuing her schooling in Kosovo, studying International Relations at the University of Prishtina.