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Fatma Haxhialiu Mosha

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Fatma Haxhialiu Mosha, a Kosovo-Albanian former teacher, has been a major world figure since 1979.

A proponent of language and literacy, her contributions to the social welfare of refugees have gotten special attention, and she continues to campaign for the rights of Kosovo-Albanian women.

Fatma Haxhialiu Mosha was born in 1952, the second of nine children in a peasant family in Zjum, Skopska Crna Gora, Macedonia. She attended Albanian-language schools and graduated from the Pedagogical Faculty of Pristina University in 1975. Her first teaching job was at a primary school in Gllogoc, a small town in Kosovo, where she served until 1979.

In 1979, Mosha was dismissed from her teaching position for her political activities. She had been a member of the League of Communists of Kosovo since 1971, and she had been an outspoken critic of Serbian rule in Kosovo. After her dismissal, Mosha became active in the Kosovo independence movement. She was a founding member of the Democratic League of Kosovo, and she served as its secretary-general from 1989 to 1992.

In 1992, Mosha was elected to the parliament of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo. She served as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1999. After the Kosovo War, Mosha was appointed to the Kosovo Transitional Council, which governed Kosovo until 2008. She served as the Council's Minister of Culture from 2004 to 2008.

Since 2008, Mosha has continued to be an active advocate for the rights of Kosovo-Albanian women. She is currently the President of the Kosovo Women's Network, and she is a member of the Kosovo Gender Equality Commission. Mosha is also a member of the board of the World Bank's Gender Equality Fund.

Mosha's work has been recognized by numerous national and international organizations. She has received the Mother Teresa Prize for her work on behalf of women, and she has been named a “Woman of the Year” by the Kosovo Women's Network. In 2012, she was awarded the Order of the Republic of Kosovo, Kosovo's highest honor.