Ohrid Framework Agreement 2001

This chapter provides an overview of the religious and ethnic diversity management in North Macedonia in the past and present. It focuses on the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) and the legal mechanisms it established in the aftermath of the armed conflict in Macedonia in 2001. The OFA not only contributed to the de-escalation of violence, it also paved the way for the settlement of some of the most pressing issues related to the rights of different groups and of inter-group relations in the Macedonian state. We argue that the 2001 conflict and the OFA should be read in the context of a history of solidarity and intolerance among the different ethnic and religious groups populating North Macedonia. Such an approach provides some answers to the question of why the conflict started in the first place, and how the peace process managed to decrease violence. The chapter focuses on the religious aspects of this history. The first part provides a summary of the conflict, its religious aspects in particular, and of different episodes of the multi-confessional history of Macedonia. The second part of this chapter considers the OFA and its stipulations, most notably those that sought to transform state institutions to make them more inclusive of citizens’ ethnic and religious identities. The last section focuses on developments in North Macedonia after 2001, considering the reception of the OFA by the Macedonian public and mapping some of the major challenges. In the context of ongoing armed conflicts in Europe and its neighbouring regions as well as of latent conflicts in the Balkans, the story of the OFA illustrates one possible way of settling inter-group tensions by recognising the rights of different ethnic and religious groups.