The purpose of the paper is to understand the employment policies related to people with disabilities in Kosovo. Two main methods are used in the paper, first, the method of analysing statistical and ...administrative data on the situation of persons with disabilities in the labour market, and analysing budget expenditures for disability schemes in Kosovo, and, second, the method of analysing institutional strategies, action plans, and primary and secondary legislation governing the employment of persons with disabilities. The main conclusions of the paper are: (i) Kosovo does not have official statistics regarding the number of persons with disabilities in general, and their situation in the labour market; (ii) expenditure from Kosovo's budget for financing disability schemes has steadily increased in the last three years; (iii) Kosovo has prepared and adopted an advanced legal framework that promotes vocational training, vocational retraining and employment of people with disabilities; iv) Kosovo does not have a strategic document (strategy or action plan) that defines the vision and long-term goal of increasing the employment of persons with disabilities.
This study focuses on the effect of road slope on driving cycle parameters of urban driving. A driving cycle (DC) is a series of data points that capture a vehicle’s speed versus time and is a ...crucial factor for evaluating vehicular emission. In this study, vehicles were driven on Prishtina’s urban roads with different slopes. The driving cycles for each grade class were developed using approximately 40,000 s of real-time speed data. Micro-trips were extracted using a Python-based clustering algorithm. The results indicate that the acceleration and deceleration decreased as the negative slope decreased. Drivers tended to use sharper acceleration and deceleration on uphill and downhill roads, while the lowest values of kinematic parameter values were obtained for roads with grades ranging from −2 to 2; therefore, cities with road slope values beyond this range should consider sloped roads during the development of driving cycle. Furthermore, research on CO, HC and NOx emissions related to slopes shows that for the emissions, they are more sensitive to increase from flat to uphill with respect to increasing in downhill to flat sections.
This article argues that there is much confusion surrounding Serbia's landmark decision to engage in a process of normalization with Kosovo. Rather than undergoing a process of Europeanization, ...whereby a fundamental transformation in the underlying rationale and processes of decision‐making occurred, as some have argued, the changes in Serbia's policy are in fact based on material concerns. By tracing relations in the EU‐Serbia‐Kosovo triangle, the article shows that change in Serbia's approach towards Kosovo is based on pragmatism and political opportunism, rather than absorption, adaptation, convergence or identity formation. What we have witnessed is a more short‐term, interest based policy shift serving very specific economic purposes. In conceptual terms, this is better understood as a policy of rationally instrumental ‘pre‐Accession Europeanization’ rather than as a process of adaptive normative Europeanization as more conventionally understood in the literature.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease characterized by episodes of airway narrowing leading to manifestations of symptoms such as wheeze, shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough, ...that may resolve spontaneously or following treatment.
The aim of this paper was to present the collected data related to the prevalence of self-reported respiratory symptoms, asthma, and use of asthma medication among school children aged 13-14 years from the city of Gjilan, a municipality located in southeast Kosovo.
This was a cross-sectional study realized during the year 2018 as a part of the Project of Global Asthma Network (GAN) Phase I. The study elaborated randomly selected sample of 1200 school children from the city of Gjilan, in the southeast of Kosovo. The mean age was 13.4±0.51 with median IQR=13 (13-14). About 618 (51.5%) were male and 582 (48.5%) were female with the relation between the genders of 1:1.1. The percentage difference between the genders was not statistically significant (Difference test: Difference 3% (-0.99-6.99) CI 95%; Chi-square=2.159; df=1 p=0.1417). The prevalence of wheezing/ whistling in the chest EVER and the last 12 months was 12.7% vs. 6.4% respectively with no significant association between gender and symptoms (p>0.05) (Table 1). About 1132 (94.3%) had no attacks of wheezing in the last 12 MONTHS, 59 (4.9%) had 1-3 attacks, 7 (0.6%) had 4-12 attacks and 2 (0.2%) had>12 attacks. The analysis did not indicate a significant association between gender and the frequency of wheezing attacks (none / 1-3 / ≥ 4) for Pearson Chi-square: 2.5501; df=2; p=0.2801.
This study has found moderately low asthma prevalence among adolescents in the southeast region of Kosovo, with no significant association between genders. Although, should be considered as an urgent need the proper examination, because asthma seems to be under-diagnosed and also untreated. It's possible that doctors in our country hesitate to diagnose asthma or the parents themselves and the children deny it.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of returnee entrepreneurs’ education and knowledge transfer (KT) on business development (BD) as well as the moderating effect of time ...living abroad on returnee entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach The quantitative approach was used in this study to grasp and validate the conceptual framework. This research was guided by a positivist survey research technique. A structured questionnaire was used as a data collection tool, and 151 returnee entrepreneurs were involved in the study. SEM with SmartPLS was used as a data analysis tool. Findings The results of this study show that returnee entrepreneur’s education and KT is positively associated with BD, while the time living abroad was not proved to have a moderation effect on BD. Practical implications This study has academic and practical relevance, as it adds new knowledge and a better understanding of the role of returnee entrepreneurs in BD and expands research on returnee entrepreneurs. In terms of practical contributions, this research offers suggestions to governments, policymakers and the business community about the impact of returnee entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial ecosystems of their home countries. Originality/value This study is one of the few studies that have analysed the impact of returnee entrepreneurs’ education and KT on BD by using the survey technique. The results of this empirical research are based on primary data collected via a questionnaire.
The article analyzes the process of normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina after adopting the Agreement on the Path to Normalization. The analytical framework of neorealism was used to ...explain that the normalization process was accelerated due to the war crisis in Eastern Europe. The international legal aspects of the agreement were scrutinized, based on the method of content analysis and comparative studies, to argue that the agreement is a legally binding treaty between two sides that respect each other’s international legal personality. The authors concluded that the European Union and the United States attempted to create new momentum in the decade-long and rather unsuccessful process by adopting the Agreement and the Annex on implementation. Thus, these documents were put in the context of relations between Belgrade and Pristina and broader European and regional levels of complex relations. In addition, the analysis concluded that the documents serve as new impulses in normalization as a continuous legal formalization of relations between the two sides based on international legal rules.
This article highlights the significance of Lëvizja Vetëvendosje’s (LVV) left-wing Kosovar Albanian nationalist challenge to the authoritarian and patrimonial nationalist system of Kosovo’s rebel ...victors. LVV used the political settlement’s own legitimizing metanarrative – that of Kosovar Albanian nationalism – to bolster their own legitimacy while undermining that of post-war elites drawn from organizations active in the conflict of the 1990s. A methodology based on Discursive Institutionalism makes sense of LVV’s position as both a challenger of rebel victors but also as a representative of the same ideological culture that underpins Kosovo’s political culture. There are two key contributions here. Empirically, this study characterizes LVV as a nationalist challenge to the rebel victor parties rather than as a distinctively nationalist or a protest party. The second contribution is theoretical: peacebuilding and political settlements theories must take a more dynamic and agency-sensitive view of legitimacy creation than they have hitherto.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures brought for prevention of infections are associated with considerable psychosocial and psychological morbidity in the general population. Providing continuous ...mental health services during the pandemics is a challenge worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This paper reports on the strategies and activities taken to protect public mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kosovo. This included establishing online and phone psychological first aid services and developing psychoeducational videos and webinars. The paper concludes with several lessons learned during the process of establishing and maintaining these interventions, such as: initial political endorsement is crucial to gain and maintain the momentum of services; continuous training of volunteers is crucial for both addressing the needs/problems, which arise during the process of work and maintain the motivation of volunteers; promotion of the services is crucial; academic curricula training mental health professionals should include digital mental health related courses and manualization on how to establish this kind of services in midst of crisis is crucial in order to ensure quick operationalization when needed again especially in LMIC settings. The interventions developed provide opportunity for further research especially by evaluating the impact of the services and exploring how online and provision of mental health and psychoeducation services online could help to cover services gap in times of isolation, limited movement and situations similar to pandemics in settings with limited mental health services and resources. The situation with pandemics with COVID 19 is still far from ending. Future waves of infections and restriction could again spike the mental health and psychosocial and psychological strain of the general population, therefore being prepared in provisions of psychological first aid and other mental health services online is crucial.
Abstract
The introductory article in this issue argues for greater consideration of the impact of the Kosovo crisis on political developments in other Yugoslav republics and on the entire federal ...state structure of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death. It also calls for a closer examination of alternative paths that were considered by various actors to resolve the conflict but were not or could not be pursued. Such a discussion of developments in Kosovo in the 1980s in a broader Yugoslav perspective would, it is argued, also have the potential to contribute to a more complex understanding of the Kosovo crisis itself.
Abstract
Understanding attitudes towards the environment is important because they often determine behaviour that either increases or decreases environmental quality. In this article we investigate ...the environmental worldview of the young people from Kosovo. The New Revised Environmental Paradigm Scale or New Ecological Paradigm Scale, known as NEP Scale (Dunlap et al., 2000) was used. The study involved 330 young people age 18-20. 150 young people are from secondary schools, and other (180) are from some different faculties at the State University in Mitrovica. The mean score for the full NEP scale in this study was 3.48, which indicates a low endorsement of the NEP among the sample of Kosovo young people. The averages of the sub-dimensions varied between 3.08 (“Limits to growth”) and 3.73 (“Eco-crisis”). Like as others non-industrialized societies, young people from Kosovo tend to believe in the profound connection between humanity and nature, or there are no clear differences between pro-NEP and pro-DSP views. This study confirms the thesis that environmental worldviews differ across cultures. The mean value of the NEP Scale can be feasibly associated with various variables concerning general environmental attitudes. In order to discover the factors that create a pro-ecological orientation of young people in this country, additional researches are needed.
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