Volumen 17 (2022): Edición 2 (December 2022)

Spatial developments contribute to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions and disordered land use. At the same time, climate change impacts have spatial implications, influencing the land uses and settlements development, and damaging habitats, ecosystems, infrastructure and other assets. Considering its regulatory character and multi-sectorial approach, spatial planning is gaining an increasingly important role in climate change management. As such, it could be better utilized in increasing climate resiliency and achieving decarbonization targets in Kosovo as well. While Kosovo is prone to natural hazards such as floods, landslides, droughts, and wildfires, the future climate change could further impact the economy, infrastructure, buildings, energy, health and wellbeing of its communities. Assuming that climate change considerations are not sufficiently integrated in spatial planning policies at the national level in Kosovo, this research assesses the extent that the Law on Spatial Planning and the Spatial Plan of Kosovo (also referred as the Spatial Planning Strategy) address those considerations. Upon the identified gaps, this research provides recommendations for better climate change management, risk reduction and resiliency building. Considering that the Spatial Plan of Kosovo has expired, and the Kosovo’s institutions are currently reviewing and considering the updating of the Law on Spatial Planning, the findings of this research could better inform and orient climate change mainstreaming in spatial planning at the central level.

The aim of the paper is to explore the discourse strategies of the Party of Labor of Albania to eliminate its enemies in the early years of establishing communism in the country. The contention is that PLA and its leaders made possible the elimination of thousands of people by normalizing the process. The enemies of the party were declared enemies of the people and as such, they had to disappear in one way or another, so that the integrity of the body politics could be preserved. The class enemy was considered a parasite that should be eliminated in the name of social prophylaxis. By using discourse analyses the paper will investigate the discursive strategies followed by the communist party and its leader when addressing the class enemy. Speeches of Enver Hoxha in Party Congresses, Plenums, and gatherings with people will be analyzed. Only by normalizing the process of elimination of everyone who was depicted as an enemy, did the communist party make possible the elimination of thousands of people. Normalization is understood as the standardization of the procedure so that everyone knew in advance what would happen if someone had to be declared an enemy of the people. The paper will analyze the vocabulary used to portray the class enemy and his/her destiny in specific cases. The study has analyzed the speeches given to justify the elimination of Patër Anton Harapi, Lef Nosi, Maliq Bej Bushat, dom Lazër Shantoja, dom Ndre Zadeja, and the sabotage group of the Maliqi swamp. The analysis covers the period immediately after the end of the IIWW when communists seized the power.

Forced population migration is not a modern phenomenon. It is often an integral part of totalitarian policies and has been used repeatedly to ensure the survival of political regimes or achieve specific political ambitions. Violent migration is present practically throughout history when considering the time scope and everywhere, practically in all continents of the world, with a specter of variations depending on the context imposed by the political circumstances, we can encounter it under different names. These variations have also reflections in the terminology used, among others, they are also indicators that speak of the different methods applied in order to achieve particular policies.

Individuals, families, or even whole peoples are forced to migrate violently, abandon their homes and leave behind them all their lives, including the material goods created up to that moment. Seen from a normal retrospective, forced migration represents the culmination of a regime’s goals to dominate the territory without hindrance from any possible resistance. This fact has brought so many tragedies to humanity, and even worse, it has often ended with “legitimization” by international treaties or has even been the product of inter-state agreements. Forced population migration has clearly brought to the surface the evil purpose and has revealed territorial ambitions.

This study examines the complex and dynamic relationship between Kosovo and NATO. It argues that Kosovo’s prospects for NATO membership are shaped by an array of contradictory and often confusing international and domestic political forces. It draws on theoretical sources, media reports, and descriptive statistical data to the factors shaping expectations for NATO membership. The study relies on theories and concepts from the established and evolving literature on alliance formation and expansion to explain how states aspiring for membership in security organizations must navigate a pattern of political and security hurdles in their quest for membership accession. It then explores Kosovo’s case for NATO membership by examining whether Kosovo has met key political and security benchmarks and devotes significant attention to the settlement dispute with Serbia, the roles played by the U.S. and E.U., and identifies alternative paths for Kosovo’s membership in NATO.

The aim of this research is to analyze the political discourse and the language they used in public addresses provided by two former presidents of the United States, specifically, President Barak Obama and President Donald Trump. This research reflects on the material that has been collected for several months which aimed to contribute on the analysis of the corpus, distinctions and similarities, as well as their attitudes towards the public opinion. The objectives of this study are mainly empirical and theoretical. Considering the empirical objectives, this study seeks to explore, identify and categorize the most used words in a political speech according to the categories, form, function and meaning, whereas, the theoretical objectives of this study are to provide a description of the language that is used in major events from well-known politicians when aiming to capture people’s attention. Their rhetorical habits were examined, in every delivery of Mr. Obama’s political speech; his speeches were carefully and well-articulated throughout his 8 year political service in the oval office, portraying him as a kind person. On the other hand, Mr. Trump’s, as a non-politician, more as a businessman, political speeches throughout his campaign and 4 years in the office were very often seen as aggressive, unforeseen, and nonetheless straight to the point.

This study covers the linguistic level analysis as well as semantic and pragmatic levels. Initially, the selected corpora were analyzed using the Ant Conc software regarding frequency of usage and then move into detailed analysis.

The right to life includes the absolute freedom of the individual to live without being endangered or threatened, in conditions of freedom and promotion of interpersonal values. The purpose of the paper is to provide a general overview of the right to life, including the consequences of denying this right, as well as the main forms or distinguishing investigative characteristics in determining whether it is a case of murder or suicide. To provide the required data, a statistical method was used, through which the frequency of murder and suicide during the years 2019-2022 was presented. The comparative method was used to compare the findings on the change in number in relation to the prevalence of murders and suicides. The interview method was used to collect data on the prevalence of murders and suicides at the local level, as well as to determine the distinctive investigative features of these cases. The results of the research indicate that murder, aggravated murder and suicide have been decreased during the period 2019-2022, respectively the first six months of 2022. The results also indicate that investigators may face some difficulties such as the lack of cooperation of witnesses, the unintentional and intentional destruction of evidence, the movement of the victim’s body by changing its position, or even in some cases the lack of professionalism of the investigator. Based on the results, the investigators can distinguish whether it is a case of murder or suicide based on the position of the victim, the type of caused wound, bodily secretions, the past of the victim and the presence of a weapon at the scene. Investigators do not often face doubts as to whether the case is murder or suicide due to sufficient evidence. The research indicates that in some cases the investigators can also face those situations when the murder is staged with manipulative methods to look like suicide.

This paper examines the way students developed their leadership potential by delivering an oral presentation and a project in an ‘English for Social Sciences’ course. By using a communicative approach, students were motivated to develop their leadership skills, which stimulated their learning and understanding at deeper levels. The survey was conducted with 14 students at undergraduate level, in their second year ESP Social Sciences 1 course; the students attend the Public Administration, International Communications, and Political Sciences departments of South East European University. The results showed that students attending this course showed the potential of developing leadership skills, and expressed positive attitudes and proficiency when delivering an oral presentation and project according to their preference in their field of study. Students were challenged and motivated to develop leadership skills, such as integrity and strength of character, that will prepare them for becoming potential leaders.

Criminal responsibility refers to a person’s ability to understand his action, behavior at the time a crime is committed, what a person is thinking when he commits a crime or the expected result when a crime is committed. Crime is defined in terms of an act or omission (actus reus) and a mental state (mens rea). In this paper, is presented the general concept of irresponsibility and essentially reduced responsibility as a reason to be exempted from the punishment provided by the Criminal Code. Any perpetrator of a criminal offense who is capable of undertaking any action can be an active subject of a criminal offense, with the fact that regarding their sanctioning by the criminal system is concerned there are some restrictions related to age as well as dividing the perpetrators into responsible and non-responsible ones. For a person to be convicted of a crime, there must be evidence that proves his guilt, and that proves whether the perpetrator was in a regular state of mind or committed the criminal offense due to his irresponsibility.

Another important element of this scientific paper is the historical aspects of how irresponsibility has been treated from the customary law to the present day, a huge focus gets also the treatment of the biological-psychological concept on one hand and the treatment of the legal concept on the other hand for this category of people. A criminal defendant who turns out to have been incapacitated at the time he committed a crime may be acquitted because of his incapacity, or he may be sentenced leniently because he was unable to understand the importance of his actions. Legally, the defendant must prove and convince the court that he was not able to understand his actions, or he is not able to distinguish right from wrong, or he must prove that he committed the act in uncontrolled impulses.

This paper provides various perspectives of scholars on inclusive education throughout its history and the role of an inclusive teacher in inclusive education schools with specific focus on children with disabilities that attend regular classes with their non-disabled peers.

The paper is based on the literature review of various research papers and studies that were published by prominent and specialized scholars, institutions and relevant organizations in the field of inclusive education, with a focus on disabled children and their rights to have equal chances for education in regular schools with their peers. The paper further reflects teachers experience and perception on the inclusive education process and the challenges they face in this regard.

Finally, the paper provides various views on what is expected by an inclusive teacher and what type of support and assistance they need to get from other educators and teachers specialized in education of children with disabilities in order to meet children’s needs in the context. The paper also describes the importance of inclusive teacher’s collaboration with the school management, children’s parents and caregivers and other relevant specialists in order to understand the specific background of child’s type of disability with the aim of adapting his teaching methodology, tools and materials as per child’s specific needs for an individualized education planning if needed.

Authorship Analysis (AA) is a natural language processing field that examines the previous works of writers to identify the author of a text based on its features. Studies in authorship analysis include authorship identification, authorship profiling, and authorship verification. Due to its relevance, to many applications in this field attention has been paid. It is widely used in the attribution of historical literature. Other applications include legal linguistics, criminal law, forensic investigations, and computer forensics. This paper aims to provide an overview of the work done and the techniques applied in the authorship analysis domain. The examination of recent developments in this field is the principal focus. Many different criteria can be used to define a writer’s style. This paper investigates stylometric features in different author-related tasks, including lexical, syntactic, semantic, structural, and content-specific ones. A lot of classification methods have been applied to authorship analysis tasks. We examine many research studies that use different machine learning and deep learning techniques. As a means of pointing the direction for future studies, we present the most relevant methods recently proposed. The reviewed studies include documents of different types and different languages. In summary, due to the fact that each natural language has its own set of features, there is no standard technique generically applicable for solving the AA problem.