Kosovo has an area of 10,887 square kilometers (one third the size of Belgium). It is a geographical basin, situated at an altitude of about 500 meters, surrounded by mountains, and divided by a central north/south ridge into two subregions of roughly equal size and population.
Detailed demographic data are not available - but the total 1998 population is believed to have been slightly above 2.2 million people, including 82 to 90 percent ethnic Albanians. A large diaspora, mainly in Western Europe, plays an important role, particularly through remittances and the financing of the parallel structures developed throughout the 1990s. Minorities include Serbs, Gorans or Bosniacs (Muslim Slavs), Roms, and Turks. Demographic growth is estimated at about twenty per thousand and average household size is believed to be about 6 to 7 persons. Kosovo’s population is by far the youngest in Europe, with about half the people below the age of 20.
Kosovo is divided into 29 municipalities and about 1,500 villages. It is mainly rural, with about two thirds of the population living in villages, and only nine towns with over 20,000 inhabitants (about 30 percent of the population).
Pre-war GDP is unknown, since official estimates (at about US$400 per capita) did not account for a large share of the economy: the informal sector activities. Still, Kosovo was clearly by far the poorest part of FRY.
European
Commission / World Bank
Program for Reconstruction and Recovery in Kosovo
