Šuto Orizari (; Balkan Romani: Shuto Orizari; ), often shortened as Šutka (Шутка), is one of the ten municipalities that make up the City of Skopje, the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia. Šuto Orizari is also the name of the urban neighbourhood where the municipal seat is located. It consists of a council and mayor. Šuto Orizari covers 7.48 km² and had 17,357 inhabitants in 2002. It is the second smallest municipality of Skopje behind Čair and the least populated. Created ex-nihilo after the 1963 Skopje earthquake to relocate Romani people in North Macedonia who had lost their house, Šuto Orizari remains the only municipality in North Macedonia with a Muslim Romani people majority. In 2002, they represented almost 80% of the population, which also included small numbers of Albanians in North Macedonia and ethnic Macedonians. Šuto Orizari is the only local administrative unit in the world to have adopted Balkan Romani as an official language. History For much of its history, Šuto Orizari was a small village in the country, as were neighbouring Butel and Vizbegovo. Its name derives from orizar (оризар), the Macedonian word for paddy field. It is only after the 1963 Skopje earthquake that the area became urbanised. Through the 20th century, Skopje had greatly expanded: while it had only 41,000 inhabitants in 1921, it had reached 166,870 in 1961. As a result, the area around Šuto Orizari was slowly becoming part of the city. Before the earthquake, most of Skopje's Romani people in North Macedonia community lived in areas close to the Old Bazaar. The largest one is Topaana, located close to the fortress and home to Roma people since at least the 14th century. Built in cheap materials, Topaana and the other Roma settlements were severely damaged by the earthquake which destroyed around 80% of the whole city. Thanks to international aid, the reconstruction started quickly after the earthquake. Local authorities took the opportunity to rebuild Skopje as a functional and modern city, privileging large blocks of flats and dividing Skopje into areas dedicated to specific uses. As they also had to build new accommodation for the large Roma minority, they first considered the reconstruction as a way to assimilate them and resolve unemployment and sanitary problems that concerned that population. Most of the Muslim Roma population refused to live in the new buildings and authorities eventually decided to give them a