UNDP: About 60% of citizens in Kosovo believe that the Ohrid agreement will positively affect their lives

2024-02-28 18:03:23, Kosova & Bota CNA

UNDP: About 60% of citizens in Kosovo believe that the Ohrid agreement will

A survey by the United Nations Development Program, published on Wednesday, points out that about 60 percent of citizens in Kosovo believe that the agreement to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia will positively affect their lives.

"A total of 60.8 percent is collected through the two responses 'I strongly believe it will influence' and 'I believe it will influence', while this number was 58 percent in April 2023, so we see a slight positive increase in citizens' perception of how they will be affected by this agreement", said Alisa Hasani, project manager.

She emphasized that about 75 percent of respondents believe that this agreement will contribute to long-term peace in Kosovo.

These data are part of the survey called "Public Pulse" that is conducted with the support of the American Agency for International Development with one thousand and 307 citizens in all municipalities of Kosovo.

Survey data show that citizens from the Serbian community in Kosovo have less expectations from this agreement, as only about 32 percent of them believe that it will have any impact on their lives.

According to the report, over 42 percent of respondents expressed satisfaction with the work of Kosovo's central institutions, while nearly 24 percent of them expressed satisfaction with Kosovo's political direction. A lower number of respondents were willing to protest for political reasons in this report than in April 2023.

The United Nations Development Program survey, which aims to reflect citizens' opinions on the situation in the country, lists poverty, unemployment and prices for essential items as the three main issues affecting their well-being.

The Permanent Representative of this program in Kosovo, Nino Queiros, said that this is the most disturbing part for him in this survey.

"The fact that 25 percent of citizens are very worried about poverty and the fact that the second concern after it is unemployment worries me from a developmental point of view because if you are worried about poverty but you think you are likely to be employed in some way, you have a way out , but if you worry about poverty and on top of that you also worry about unemployment, then this is a double negative impact on the perception of the future", he said.

In the survey of the United Nations Development Program, there is talk of a slight decrease in citizens' perception of their security. In total, about 79 percent of citizens say that they feel safe, compared to about 83 percent, which was this number in the last survey. The data broken down by ethnicity shows that a higher percentage of Kosovo Albanians and members of other Kosovo communities have reported that they feel safe, compared to Kosovo Serbs./ voa