“Sustainable Kosovo-Advocacy for Young People!”

Think Young, a Brussels-based think tank working to promote youth interests at EU level , will host a conference about Kosovo’s issue of visa liberalization on 5th March 2012. The conference will take place at Think Young’s offices in Brussels.

Key speakers include MEP Doris Pack, Kosovo’s Ambassador Illir Dugolli and MEP Ulrike Lunacek.

The event arrives only one and a half months after Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, launched a visa liberalization dialogue with Kosovo. Until now, the country’s requests to be part of the Schengen agreement have been rejected, meaning that its citizens cannot access visa-free travel across the EU.

According to Think Young, the situation has particularly damaged the Kosovar youth, who represent around  50% of Kosovo’s population and who are  therefore key to country’s development.

The conference is part of Think Young’s ongoing project in Kosovo, “Sustainable Kosovo”, which started in 2009 sparked by the idea to bridge the cultural  gap between youth from Eastern and Western European countries.

While the first edition of the  project was motivated by the goal to raise  awareness of the youth in Kosovo  and their struggles to explore Europe, to study abroad and have working experiences due to visa restriction, the second edition of the project focused on the general development of the country, extending the report on young people in Kosovo beyond Prishtina , Kosovo’s capital city.

The  activities of the second edition of the Kosovo project included: the documentary “This Summer in Kosovo”, a survey titled “Political involvement of the youth in Kosovo” and a study trip with 5 young Europeans from countries standing against visa liberalization for Kosovo.

The survey’s preliminary results show that, while 61% of the interviewees consider Kosovo a democratic country, 71%  argue that the current political institutions and representatives are not trustworthy; 32% pointed to corruption of government officials as the main reason for this.

The conference will present and interpret the results of this survey, as well as the conclusions of Think Young’s three-years long research project. The youth-led organization has concluded that freedom of movement is a fundamental element for Kosovo’s development. Think Young’s belief is that not only Kosovo but also the EU could profit from visa liberalization through the potential of the Kosovar youth.

Think Young wants to achieve three important goals:

– Make young Europeans aware of the situation in Kosovo – not only to benefit the development of Kosovo itself, but also because of the potential this country has for the rest of Europe.

– Promote Kosovo’s Sustainable Development: the goal is to show young people’s relevance in regards to their country’s development. By providing youngsters’ importance in Kosovo, Think Young will also be proving the potential of all young people in Europe.

– Help the lobby for visa liberalization 

To read more about the  “Sustainable Kosovo” project please visit www.thinkyoung.eu