Ms. Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz
Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Justice
Biography
Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz was born in Skopje on 16 October 1971. When she was eight, her dissident father fled to Germany in the face of severe persecution by Yugoslavia’s communist regime. Gërvalla-Schwarz, her two siblings, and her mother soon followed.
In Untergruppenbach in 1982, Gërvalla-Schwarz’s father and uncle, along with a family friend, were assassinated in what German authorities described as a “professional hit” ordered by the Secret Service of the Yugoslav regime. Fearing for the safety of her children, her mother moved the family to Tirana, Albania, where Gërvalla-Schwarz enrolled at the age of 16 in the Academy of Arts, graduating four years later as a flutist. In 1992, she left Albania to study music and later law in Hamburg, Germany.
In 1990, Gërvalla-Schwarz helped organize the historic referendum on the independence of the Republic of Kosova. In December 1990, she took part in the student movement in Tirana, and in 1991 she participated in a student hunger strike that became a milestone in the defeat of the communist dictatorship in Albania. Thirteen years later, the President of Albania honored Gërvalla-Schwarz and other strike organizers for their contribution to overcoming the tyranny of communism.
In the early 1990s, as Kosova’s political and security situation deteriorated under the oppression of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević, Gërvalla-Schwarz rallied international and domestic support for peace, stability, and self-determination — including by officially approaching foreign governments and organizing mass demonstrations attended by up to 100,000 citizens.
During the Milošević regime’s 1998–1999 genocidal war against Kosova, Gërvalla-Schwarz served as the spokesperson of the LDK abroad. Only at the end of the successful NATO-led international intervention was she able to visit her country for the first time in 19 years.
Having rejected previous invitations to run for parliament, she agreed in 2021 to become a candidate of Lista GUXO, the political movement led by now-President Vjosa Osmani. Together with the party of now-Prime Minister Albin Kurti (Vetëvendosje – Self-Determination), the list won the elections with an unprecedented 50.3 percent of the vote. More than forty years after she and her family were forced to flee Kosova, Gërvalla-Schwarz entered parliament with the fifth-highest number of votes on the Vetëvendosje – Lista GUXO combined party list. She currently serves as the official leader of Guxo, which was recently registered as a political party.
In March 2021, the parliament appointed Gërvalla-Schwarz Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Diaspora of the Republic of Kosova.
In the Kurti II Government, she served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora.
Gërvalla-Schwarz is married to Stefan Schwarz, a former member of the German parliament.
Contact:
MS. Donika Gërvalla
Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Justice
Email: donika.gervalla@rks-gov.net
Tel: 383 38 200 67 016
Address: Ministry of Justice New Government Building (former Rilindja building)