The Ohrid Agreement, or the Ohrid Framework Agreement was the peace deal signed by the government of the Republic of Macedonia and Albanian representatives in 2001. The agreement ended fighting between the National Liberation Army and the Macedonian security forces and set the groundwork for improving the rights of non-ethnic Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia. Motto: (Macedonian: Слобода или Смрт) (English: Liberty or death) Anthem: Macedonian: Денес Над Македонија (Transliteration: Denes Nad Makedonija) (Translation: Today Over Macedonia) Capital Skopje Largest city Skopje Official language(s) Macedonian1 Government President Prime Minister Parliamentary republic Branko Crvenkovski Vlado Bučkovski Independence Declared From Yugoslavia September 8, 1991 Area  - Total    - Water (%)   25,333 km² (146th... National Liberation Army is the name of several groups: Albania One of the organizations that fought to liberate Albania during World War II from Italian and German troops; see National Liberation Army (Albania), History of Albania. ...

The Agreement also included provisions for altering the official languages of the country, with any language spoken by over 20% of the population becoming co-official with the Macedonian language. Currently only Albanian with an approximate 25% of the population fulfils this criterion ^[1]. The Macedonian language (Македонски, Makedonski), also known as Macedonian Slavic, is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. ...

History

The Agreement was preceeded by the Ohrid discussions, a series of talks between Albanian and Macedonian representatives, along with representatives from the United States and European Union. The talks took place in Ohrid in the south-west of Macedonia. Ohrid (in Macedonian: Охрид, see also different names) is a city on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid in western Republic of Macedonia. ...

The Macedonian side was represented by the VMRO-DPMNE and the SDSM, while the Albanian side was represented by the DPA and the PDP. Although actively participating in armed conflict, the National Liberation Army did not participate directly in the talks ^[2]. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (Macedonian: Vnatrešno-Makedonska Revoluciona Organizacija-Demokratska Partija za Makedonsko Nacionalno Edintsvo), or VMRO-DPMNE is a political party in the Republic of Macedonia. ... Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (Macedonian: Социјалдемократски Сојуз на Македонија Socijaldemokratski Sojuz na Makedonija, СДСМ SDSM) is a political party in the Republic of Macedonia. ... DPA is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, including Drug Policy Alliance The biggest anti-drug war advocacy group in the United States. ... PDP is also used as an acronym for Plasma Display Panel and Parallel Distributed Processing. ... National Liberation Army is the name of several groups: Albania One of the organizations that fought to liberate Albania during World War II from Italian and German troops; see National Liberation Army (Albania), History of Albania. ...

The position of the Albanians was that as a significant minority in the country their rights should be on a level with the rights of the Macedonians, the majority ethnic group. The constitution guaranteed rights for minorities, but these came under the rights of the majority group.

Notes

1. ↑  The Implementation of the Ohrid Agreement: Ethnic Macedonian Resentments by Ulf Brunnbauer (as a PDF)
2. ↑  The Ohrid Framework Agreement Negotiations by Vasko Popetrevski and Veton Latifi (as a PDF)

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. ... Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system used to create those documents. ...

Links

1. Full text of the Ohrid Agreement (from the Council of Europe)