Vjosa Osmani

Biography

Vjosa Osmani was born in Mitrovica in 1982 and was a teenager during the Kosovo War. She took a law degree at the University of Pristina in 2004 and studied at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, earning an LLM in 2005 and a doctorate in 2015. She taught at the University of Pristina from 2006 and later at RIT Kosovo, and was a visiting professor in Pittsburgh.

Active in the Democratic League of Kosovo from her teens, she became chief of staff to President Fatmir Sejdiu in 2009 and advised him on legal and foreign affairs. She represented the president on the commission that drafted Kosovo's constitution and argued Kosovo's case at the International Court of Justice over its declaration of independence. Elected to the Assembly for three terms, she chaired its foreign affairs and European integration committees.

She was the LDK's candidate for prime minister in the 2019 election and became Speaker of the Assembly in February 2020. After clashing with the party leadership she was removed as deputy leader and left the LDK. When President Hashim Thaçi resigned in November 2020 after his indictment by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, she became acting president.

For the February 2021 election she founded the Guxo list and allied with Albin Kurti's Vetëvendosje, winning more than 300,000 personal votes in a landslide. The Assembly elected her president on 4 April 2021, making her Kosovo's second female head of state. She served a full five-year term until April 2026 and rejoined the LDK that year.