Which Countries Don’t Recognize Kosovo, and What are Their Reasons?

The crisis in the breakaway Serbian region of Kosovo nearly escalated into a war in 2022 amid a dispute which began as a squabble over license plates. The crisis once against raises the question of the province’s international recognition.

About 100 United Nations member states recognize Kosovo’s independence, among them the United States, many of its major European, Asian, and Middle Eastern allies, a sprinkling of countries in Africa and a handful of states in Latin America. The breakaway declared independence in 2008, nine years after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and under the "protection" of a massive US military base in the province known as Camp Bondsteel.

Which countries don’t recognize Kosovo’s independence, and why? Some of the answers may surprise you.

Which NATO Members Don’t Recognize Kosovo?

Yes, it’s true! Even within the US-led security bloc, whose members ordinarily take orders from Washington as if they are some kind of holy screed, recognition of Kosovo is not absolute. Greece, Slovakia, Romania and Spain didn’t recognize Kosovo in 2008 and haven’t budged in their position ever since.

The reasons for these countries’ non-recognition are pretty simple. Greece considers Pristina’s unilateral declaration of independence as a bad precedent in relation to Cyprus and the self-proclaimed "Turkish Republic of North Cyprus" (which the United Nations considers “occupied” by Turkey, and which is not recognized by any UN member except Ankara). Traditional friendly ties between Athens and Belgrade, and common historical, cultural and religious bonds, also likely influence Greece’s position.

Slovakia, Romania, and Spain are in a similar boat. Bratislava fears recognition of Kosovo would strengthen the negotiating position of ethnic Hungarians in southern Slovakia, some of whom are clamoring for independence, while Bucharest fears the same from ethnic Hungarians in Northern Transylvania, who similarly seek freedom, and a possible return to Hungary. As for Spain, the country is riddled with separatist movements, with people in Catalonia, Valencia, the Basque region, and Galicia all threatening to turn the map of the Iberian nation into Swiss cheese if they get independence. The last thing Madrid needs is an international pretext.

Which Major Powers Don’t Recognize Kosovo?

While major political, economic and/or military powers such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Japan and Australia recognize Kosovo’s independence, other important countries do not. These include Russia, as well as Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria and South Africa. Together, these nine nations make up about fifty percent of the world’s population, about a third of the planet’s surface area, and half of humanity’s total economic output.

The reasons for non-"golden billion" countries’ non-recognition of Kosovo are diverse, ranging from concerns by Nigeria and China that Pristina’s proclamations could give their own separatist-minded forces some bad ideas, to the traditional historical amity between Moscow and Belgrade, to concerns about the implications of Kosovo’s ‘independence’ for international security order established after World War II.

In 2008, Russia warned that Kosovo’s unilateral proclamation of independence would not only be a violation of Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but the UN Charter, the Security Council resolution on the Kosovo peacekeeping force, the Helsinki Final Act, Kosovo’s constitutional framework and high-level contact group accords.

“Those who are considering supporting separatism should understand the dangerous consequences their actions threaten for the world order, international stability and the UN Security Council’s decisions that took decades to build,” the Russian Foreign Ministry warned in a statement at the time.

President Putin characterized the Kosovo situation as a “terrible precedent, which will effectively blow apart the whole system of international relations…They have not thought through the consequences of what they are doing. Ultimately, this is a double-edged sword which will whack them in the head someday,” he said in early 2008. That day didn’t take long in coming, with the Georgian attack on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in August 2008 culminating in South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s secession from Georgia, with Moscow recognizing them as independent states.

Who Else Rejects Kosovo’s Independence?

Dozens of other nations, most of them members of the Non-Aligned Movement –a 120-member forum committed to refusing to align militarily or politically any major global power bloc, also reject Kosovo’s self-proclaimed status. These include (but are not limited to) Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico.

As with bigger powers, these smaller nations have varying reasons for non-recognition, ranging from concerns by some that it could complicate their own territorial disputes (as in the case of Morocco and Western Sahara, for example), to opposition to unilateral international legal decisions (Vietnam), to principled antagonism to the “Yankee imperialists” (Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua and North Korea).

Which Countries’ Kosovo Recognition Status is Fuzzy?

In a world with 193 UN member states and about a dozen countries with limited recognition, things can get a bit complicated and legal lines blurred when tracking who does and doesn’t accept Kosovo as a country separate from Serbia. For example, Liberia recognized Kosovo in 2008, but ten years later, in June 2018, announced that it would “annul” its recognition. However, a few days later, the country’s foreign ministry formally “refut[ed] reports in some international and social media of its revocation of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Kosovo.” Guinea-Bissau, which recognized Kosovo in 2011, informed Pristina in 2017 that it had reversed its position. However, a few months later, the West African nation apparently changed its mind, with Pristina proudly announcing from time to time ever since that yep, Guinea-Bissau still recognizes them.

While Oman recognized Kosovo in 2011, Pristina announced shortly after that Muscat “never recognized us.” Pristina’s envoy in Saudi Arabia confirmed that Kosovo did not get recognition from Oman. More than a decade later, Oman’s foreign ministry put the question to bed, confirming that Muscat does indeed recognize and have diplomatic relations with the Balkan breakaway.

Then there are the ‘who knows’ countries. For example, after the tiny Polynesian country of Tonga was reported to have recognized Kosovo in early 2014, local media soon announced that no official statement had been made on the matter. Does Tonga recognize Kosovo? We may never know. Sao Tome and Principe’s position on Kosovo also vexed the heck out of everybody for a while. While Prime Patrice Trovoada recognized the country in 2012, President Manuel Pinto da Costa publicly announced that he wasn’t consulted about it and refused to approve. The issue seemed to have been finally resolved in early 2022, when Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic met with current Prime minister Jorge Lopes Bom Jesus, confirming that Sao Tome most certainly does not recognize Kosovo. Kosovo’s authorities don’t seem to care though, with a website tied to the Pristina government continuing to thank Sao Tome for its recognition.

Perhaps the most Benny Hillesque out of all countries which have switched their recognition/non-recognition position repeatedly is the story surrounding Mali. In 2012, Kosovo’s then-deputy prime minister, Behgjet Pacolli, presented media with a letter of recognition, supposedly signed by then-acting President of Mali Dioncounda Traore. In response, Malian media issued a correction, saying that no such recognition was given. Pacolli dismissed the correction, claiming the Malian military, which had recently staged a coup, had made it up. Pristina promised to clarify the situation, but never did. A year later, Malian officials assured Serbia that the landlocked West African nation does not recognize Kosovo's independence and never will, and that Bamako considers respect for other countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity a key principle of its approach to foreign policy.

Which Countries Have Retracted Their Recognition of Kosovo?

According to calculations by Serbian authorities, nine countries which once recognized Kosovo have recently withdrawn their recognition. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday that these include the Caribbean island nations of Antigua & Barbuda and St. Lucia, Burkina Faso, Eswatini (a landlocked kingdom sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique), Gabon, Guinea, the Maldives, Libya, and Somalia.

According to Vucic’s count, “as many as 106 countries” are now on Serbia’s side in the battle over Kosovo’s status, with 94 “unequivocally” recognizing the breakaway, and the position of three others unclear.