Kosovans Gather by 'Beau Biden Highway' to Celebrate New US President

People gathered near a road in Bibaj, Kosovo, named for Beau Biden, the late son of US President Joe Biden, on the morning of January 20 to celebrate Biden’s inauguration.

The Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III National Road was named for the former Delaware attorney general in August 2016, in thanks for his work training prosecutors and judges for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) during Kosovo’s postwar period. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in May 2015, aged 46.

The event in Bibaj was attended by American members of the Kosovo Force (KFOR), the NATO-led international peacekeeping force established in Kosovo in 1999, as well as police and public figures, according to local press reports.

Acting President of Kosovo Vjosa Osmani congratulated Biden and Kamala Harris on Twitter, calling the inauguration “a special day for the United States and an important one for the world.”

In 2016, Joe Biden, then vice president, spoke at the highway’s dedication ceremony at Camp Bondsteel, a US Army base next to the road. In that speech, he expressed pride over his son’s work and thanked the Kosovo government for bestowing the honor. “We are extremely, extremely, extremely grateful and we’re humbled beyond words,” Biden told the audience. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful