In Serbia, the rights and freedoms of national minorities are respected. Members of national minorities have constitutional right to political association, cultural institutions, education and access to information in their own language, to elect and be elected to local, republican and federal government, to engage in business and other activities. Minorities in Serbia enjoy rights in accordance with the established international standards.

Members of national minorities in Serbia develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity, without fear of assimilation against their will. They are ensured material conditions for development. Vojvodina, where the largest number of nations live, is a developed region. Kosovo and Metohija, where the Albanian population is concentrated, although economically under-developed, has had a higher rate of development in recent years than any other part of Serbia. The Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, however, do not recognize the Republic of Serbia in which they live, nor its Constitution. Under pressure from separatist political leaders and help from outside, the Albanian minority boycott all state institutions, through which they could achieve their rights and freedoms. They refuse to recognize the state authorities, to pay taxes or allow their children to be educated in their mother tongue in state schools with curricula in force for a1l students in Serbia. They boycott democratic elections in which they could elect their legitimate representatives to local, republican and federal government.

An extreme and aggressive Albanian nationalism at work in Kosovo and Metohija, accompanied by a demographic explosion, has changed the demographic face of that Province. The Albanian population has the highest birth rate in Europe. During World War Two, Hitler annexed Kosovo to Albania, a Fascist state under whose rule large numbers of Serbs and Montenegrins were expelled from Kosovo, while Albanians from Albania were settled there. By Order No. 343 of the Commissar of Internal Affairs of 5 March, 1945, Tito barred those Serbs and Montenegrins from returning to their homes. Then, during the seventies, over 200,000 Serbs were forced to leave Kosovo under the pressure of Albanian terror. Equally significant, since 1945, with the blessing of the Yugoslav authorities, between 350,000 and 400,000 Albanian refugees from Albania were settled there. In this way, the ethnic make-up of Kosovo and Metohija was changed and conditions were created for Albanians to appear on the international political scene with demands for a separate state.