Arbën Xhaferi, a politician and publicist, passed away in Skopje. He was born in Tetovo in 1948. He completed his primary and secondary education in Tetovo while studying philosophy at the University of Belgrade. Until 1990, he worked at Prishtina Television as the editor responsible for the cultural program. After the closure of this television station by Serbia, he worked as a columnist for the weekly “Time” in Prishtina and wrote for the magazine “Forum,” which was directed by Adem Demaçi. In 1993, he returned to Tetovo, assuming leadership of the Party for Democratic Prosperity, and later, after its split, he founded the Party for Democratic Prosperity of Albanians (PPDSH), which joined the People’s Democratic Party and took the name Albanian Democratic Party (DPS). He served as president of the Democratic Party of Poland for 12 years until 2007. He was a deputy in the Parliament of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) from 1994 and was one of the signatories of the founding act of the University of Tetova in 1994, as well as one of the initiators of the establishment of the University of Southeast Europe (2001). As part of the Government of Macedonia, he, along with Prime Minister Lubço Georgievski, managed the large influx of Albanian refugees from Kosovo to Macedonia in 1999. During the armed conflict in Macedonia in 2001, he was a signatory of the “Prizren Agreement” (along with the chairman of the PPD, Imer Imer, and the political representative of the National Liberation Army, Ali Ahmeti), which unified the political and military factors of the Macedonian Albanians. He later became one of the signatories of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (2001), which ended the armed conflict in Macedonia. In the Albanian press, he published numerous articles on various political issues and developments in Macedonia and the Albanian world in general. (In the photo: Arbën Xhaferi)
Text: Encyclopedic Dictionary of Kosovo – Vol. II , Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, Prishtina, 2018, page 1766.
Photo: © https://www.albinfo.ch/nderron-jete-arben-xhaferi/
Graphic processing: AHCF
