Dua Lipa Granted Albanian Citizenship

Dua Lipa has been granted Albanian citizenship in recognition of spreading awareness of the country through her music. The British singer, whose parents hail from the eastern European nation, was granted the honor after taking an oath in Tirana, the country’s capital.

Posting on social media, she shared a photo of herself in Tirana’s city hall, holding a folder printed with the country’s emblem amid a background of Albanian flags.

“Thank you President Bajram Begaj and Mayor @erionveliaj for this honour ~ got my Albanian citizenship!!,”

She added the Albanian phrase “Faleminderit, po ndihem shume krenare,” which translates to “Thank you, I’m feeling very proud.”

Begaj tweeted: “Happy to give the one and only Dua Lipa the decree of Albanian citizenship.”

The honor took place ahead of the country’s Independence Day today (November 28).

Lipa’s parents migrated from Kosovo in the early 90s as the war in Bosnia began, with the singer born in London in 1995. She returned to Albania after finishing primary school but returned to the UK to pursue her music career when she was a teenager.

“My mum is half Bosnian, so her mum was in Sarajevo at the time, but they moved to London as the situation started getting really difficult in ex-Yugoslavia,” she previously told NPR of her roots. “Something that people forget all the time is, people don’t really want to leave their country unless they really have to. It’s really out of necessity.”

She also co-founded the Sunny Hill Foundation with her father in 2016 to raise funds with annual concerts held in Kosovo to aid impoverished people.

Earlier this month, Lipa rubbished reports that she was set to perform at the 2022 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony. But in an Instagram story she shared on Sunday, Nov. 13, the pop star says she was never booked to perform, nor had she even been in discussions about it.

“There is currently a lot of speculation that I will be performing at the opening ceremony of the world cup in Qatar. I will not be performing and nor have I ever been involved in any negotiation to perform,” she wrote. “I will be cheering England on from afar.”

In her post, she urged host country Qatar to address its human rights abuses. Since 2010 when FIFA chose Qatar as the 2022 host city, concerns have continued to grow over the abysmal treatment of migrant workers, who make up 90 percent of the workforce, as PBS notes. A reported 6,500 migrant workers have died since Qatar was awarded host country status. In Qatar, same-sex relationships and activity are criminalised, and women from the region must ask permission from male guardians to travel, work, and marry. Freedom of speech is also restricted.

“I look forward to visiting Qatar when it has fulfilled all the human rights pledges it made when it won the right to host the World Cup,” Dua Lipa added in her post.

From Rolling Stone US.