Erolld Belegu, President, Kosovo Basketball Federation

Erolld is a former sports journalist for Radio-Television of Prishtina covering national football and basketball events. In 2000 he helped the sport department in introducing the Olympic Games and with the weekly football highlights. He has worked as Director and CEO for a number of marketing and promotions companies and was awarded the UN, OSCE contract to organise the campaign for voter registration for Kosovo's first democratic elections.

Message from Erolld Belegu

Dear participants,

Honoured panellists',

Let me express my gratitude for being present here today, and having the possibility to share our experience with all of you, and listen to your experiences as well.

Kosovo is a country quite far from Kurdistan. And in the first sight it looks that we have nothing to do with each other. However, it is quite interesting the similarity between our past, and also our present.

Kosovo for decades has been under occupation. Sometimes a softer one, but in the end a real apartheid regime has been installed. For 10 years, Kosovar athletes were thrown out of the fields and halls. The only solution was playing in the farm-fields and some hidden schools backyards. Years of segregation, and a two year war, were concluded by the first humanitarian bombing by NATO, which started a new period of self-government, with strong international presence.

When most of the population came back to their destroyed houses, with most of the economy out of work and a lot of victims and missing persons, it was very hard and strange to talk about sports. The priorities were quite existential, and sport was considered as a luxurious activity. However, having the youngest population in Europe, by itself made people re-organize clubs and federations, and only a couple of months later all Leagues started.

We were pretty successful in attracting young people to massively get involved in basketball, which started to attract the fans fill our halls and led to donor's interest in local teams. A big number of foreign players and coaches were part of our teams, which helped a lot in increasing the public and level of professionalism. Basketball became No:1 sport in the country. Only a couple of years after the war ended, we achieved something that few people thought it was possible: Kosovo Serb teams joined our league (for those who are not familiar, we used to be in war with Serbs). In the beginning no fans were allowed in their games and Special Forces were taking care of their security. Now, they play freely like all other teams, in full halls, and not even a single incident occurred. From the very beginning, we positively discriminated them in all organizational aspects, by paying for all their expenses and much more. In this way, basketball became the first public activity to break ethnic barriers, showing that if used correctly, sports can build bridges between nations.

However, the situation is not white only. Being a country with a population of only 2.5 millions, everything becomes smaller and smaller each time you grow up in your level. This is where international scene comes in, and pushes everything to a higher level. And this is the black hole that we are still suffering from. Even though we are now an independent country, thousands of athletes are blocked from playing with their counterparts abroad. Donors are being limited to a small market, and their support for sport is not being rewarded. Politics appears to be more important than taking out young athletes from long isolation and being ghettoized. But the problem is not only in FIBA or FIFA…

We still lack a national sports strategy that would make us easier in our way to international recognition.

I'm happy to be among government officials from Kurdistan and tell our mistakes, in order to use the lessons learnt.

Sport is still at the end of priority list in Kosovo. Not only money, but also laws and policies are either missing or being non-supportive for a sustainable sport development.

We are witnesses of the modern era and technology. The extremely high amount of information has made all of us carefully select the information that we want to accept. But these filters, I believe for most of us do not include sports. We all follow the results of Premier League, or NBA, or Formula 1… in the very second that they happen. This is why every country or region, especially those that are in a similar situation like ours, must invest in sports, must have clear strategies and policies on sport development, must have supportive legal framework for amateur and professional sport, and thus take advantage of the easiness that sports offers people to connect individuals, groups, regions and nations.

I thank you once again for inviting and I would be more than happy to further discuss anything that each of you might be interested for and related to Kosovar sport.