North Macedonia largely avoided the worst of Yugoslavia’s breakup in the 1990s, but tensions between its Slavic Macedonian majority and ethnic Albanian minority erupted into an armed insurgency in 2001, bringing the country to the edge of civil war.
The conflict was resolved that year through the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which expanded the Albanian community’s rights and representation. A decades-long dispute with Greece over the country’s name was finally settled in 2018, clearing the way for NATO membership and continued progress toward the European Union.