Arbën Xhaferi, politician and publicist, was born in Tetova. He completed primary and secondary school in Tetova, while studying philosophy at the University of Belgrade. Until 1990, he worked at Prishtina Television, as an editor responsible for the cultural program. After the closure of this television from Serbia, he worked as a columnist in the weekly “Koha” (“The Time”) in Prishtina and wrote for the magazine “Forum”, which was directed by Adem Demaçi. In 1993 he returned to Tetova, taking the leadership of the Party for Democratic Prosperity, and later, after its split, founded the Party for Democratic Prosperity of Albanians, which joined the People’s Democratic Party and took the name Albanian Democratic Party. For 12 years he was the president of the PDSH, until 2007. He was a deputy in the Parliament of Macedonia (today North Macedonia) from 1994, one of the signatories of the Act of Establishment of the University of Tetova in 1994 and one of the initiators of establishment of the University of Southeast Europe (2001). Being part of the Government of Macedonia, together with Prime Minister Lubço Georgievski managed the large flow of Albanian refugees from Kosova to Macedonia in 1999. During the armed conflict in Macedonia in 2001, he was a signatory of the “Prizren Agreement” (together with the chairman of the PPD Imer Imeri and the political representative of the National Liberation Army, Ali Ahmeti, which unified the political and military factor of the Albanians of Macedonia. Then he 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, on developments in Macedonia and in the Albanian world in general. He passed away in Skopje, in 2012. (In the photo: Arbën Xhaferi)
Text: The encyclopedic dictionary of Kosova – Vol. II , Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosova, Prishtina, 2018, page 1766.
Photo: © https://www.sobranie.mk/-243f0e9b-41f0-4a59-9c57-7c7f03657ff8-ns_article-arben-xhaferi-94_.nspx
Graphic processing: AHCF
