Kosovo is administered by the United Nations after tensions between the province?s ethnic Albanian majority and the Serbian government in Belgrade erupted in violence in the late 1990s. The Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's refusal of an international agreement to end the political impasse and the abuse of ethnic Albanians brought a massive bombing campaign against targets in Kosovo and Serbia in March 1999. At the same time, vast operations of ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians by Serbian forces resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro as well as internally in the province. Thousands of people died in the conflict. Serbian troops were forced out in the summer of 1999 and the UN took over the administration of the province.
As Kosovo is still officially part of Serbia, an agreement between the predominantly independence seeking ethnic Albanian majority of 1.5 million and the local Serb minority of 100,000 remains elusive. Half of Kosovans live in poverty in one of the least economically developed regions in Europe where most citizens are dedicated to agriculture despite the land?s rich mineral resources. Around 21,000 of the Serbs that did not flee during the conflict live in the divided city of Mitrovica which is watched over by NATO peacekeepers. International diplomats have raised concern over the slow progress of securing their rights. In February 2007, the UN proposed a road to independence that was welcomed by the ethnic Albanians, backed by the U.S.A. but immediately rejected by Russia and Serbia. In the Kosovan parliamentary elections held in November, former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci won and immediately announced that Kosovo would declare its unilateral independence after the international talks on the status of Kosovo on December 10, 2007.
According to international NGOs, an estimated 250,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), most of whom are Serbs and Roma who fled their homes, are still unable to return. The overwhelming majority of IDPs live in Serbia, but smaller numbers have also found refuge in Montenegro and parts of Kosovo like Mitrovica where there are 6,500 Serbian IDPs. A further 4,200, mostly Serbs but also Roma and Ashkaeli, were displaced after another outbreak of ethnic violence in March 2004 which effectively put a halt to the rate of return which had slowly built up in preceding years. The clashes marked a further step in the division of communities and resulted in a serious loss of trust in the ability of local authorities and the international community to rebuild a multi-ethnic Kosovo.
Photojournalist Marco Di Lauro was born in Milan on 31 October 1970. He studied literature and philosophy at Milan State University, followed by journalism at Boston University and photography at the European Institute of Design in Milan.
Marco started his personal carrier in 1990s as a freelance photographer for New York Times, Usa Today, Der Spiegel and the Un World Food Programme. In 1997 he was one of the few photo-reporters on hand in Kosovo when the ethnic cleansing begins. Due to this experience, he enters in the staff of Associated Press, where he remained from 1998 to 2002.
During the Millennium, Marco worked ad a photo editor at the AP office in Rome while also being one of the key photographers covering Pope John Paul II.
In September 2002, Marco joined Getty Images covering international news stories in Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Italy. He reported through his photos the major conflicts around the world, like the wars in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, the second intifada between Israel and Palestine, Lebanon. Marcoâ??s main topics are war and religion.
In the last 10 years his pictures were published on the main international magazines, and he has won some of the most important photographic awards.
