Women in Kosovo

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Muslim woman of Prisren (figure 1), from Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873, published under the patronage of the Ottoman Imperial Commission for the 1873 Vienna World's Fair Lescostumespopul00osma.pdf
Muslim woman of Prisren (figure 1), from Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873, published under the patronage of the Ottoman Imperial Commission for the 1873 Vienna World's Fair

Women in Kosovo are women who live in or are from the Republic of Kosovo. As citizens of a post-war nation, some Kosovar (or Kosovan) women have become participants in the process of peace-building and establishing pro-gender equality in Kosovo's rehabilitation process. [1] Women in Kosovo have also become active in politics and law enforcement in the Republic of Kosovo. An example of which is the election of Atifete Jahjaga as the fourth President of Kosovo [a] . She was the first female, [2] the first non-partisan candidate, and the youngest to be elected to the office of the presidency in the country. Before becoming president, she served as Deputy Director of the Kosovo Police, [3] holding the rank of major general, [4] the highest among women in Southeastern Europe. [5]

Contents

Gender equality

Women in Kosovo are technically equal to men in terms of the right to voting, property rights, and work. However, less than 10 percent of all businesses in Kosovo are led or owned by women and less than 3 percent of all business loans go to women. [6] This is partly due to the fact that women do not own the collateral needed to secure loans because property is mainly registered in the male's name. Only 18 percent of women own property and 3.8 percent inherited property. [7] Due to cultural customs, women are often excluded from property inheritance or are expected to give up their inheritance to male relatives.

Sexual violence during 1998-1999 conflict

During armed conflict in the region from 1998-1999, systematic rape was reported. According to Human Rights Watch in their 2000 report on the violence, there were 96 reported cases of rape committed by Serbian and Yugoslav forces against Kosovar Albanian women. [8] Many believe that this number is much lower than the actual number of victims, with estimates being in the thousands. [9]

Rape during this time took three forms: rapes in the women's houses, rapes during flight, and rapes in detention. The first form largely occurred in the villages of survivors, where they were raped in front of their families and neighbors at times. The second category applies to rapes committed against women who were internally displaced and therefore away from their homes. The last category applies to women who were raped while in temporary detention camps. Almost all of the reported rapes were gang rapes, with the majority committed by Serbian paramilitaries to deliberately terrorize civilians, extort money from familiar, or force people to flee the area. [8]

Following the end of the conflict, many survivors had their husbands leave them and some had to then raise their children alone. [10] These survivors then had no legal recognition of their suffering, so, in 2006, efforts began to give legal recognition to survivors of sexual violence during the conflict. It was not until 2014 that this law passed. Recently, legal measures have begun to implement reparations programs for women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. In September 2017, the Kosovar government allocated a budget for recognizing and verifying the status of survivors. [10] As such, these women gained the status as civilian victims of war and receive monthly pensions.

Violence against women

Ethnic Albanian women in Kosovo Kosovar Albanian women.jpg
Ethnic Albanian women in Kosovo

Domestic abuse is common throughout Kosovo. In 2016, police received 870 reports of domestic violence that subsequently lead to 243 arrests. [11] However, sources estimate that 90 percent of domestic violence incidents go unreported. In a survey done in 2015, 68 percent of women reported that they had suffered from domestic violence at one point in their lives. [11] The survey also found that 20 percent of male and female respondents thought it was acceptable for a husband to beat his wife. This overall acceptance towards domestic violence could contribute towards the high incidence rate.

Many feel that the criminal justice system is partly to blame as the combination of police corruption and a male-sympathizing system leaves them inadequately protected. Due to the status of Kosovo, citizens cannot go to the European Court of Human Rights, so therefore must address all issues domestically.

Related Research Articles

Yugoslav Wars

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies fought in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001, which led to the breakup of the Yugoslav state in 1992. Its constituent republics declared independence, despite unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, fueling the wars.

Sexual violence' is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, acts to traffic a person or acts directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.

President of Kosovo

The President of Kosovo, officially styled the President of the Republic of Kosovo, is the head of state and chief representative of the Republic of Kosovo in the country and abroad.

Violence against women Violent acts committed primarily against women and girls

Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against women or girls. Such violence is often considered a form of hate crime, committed against women or girls specifically because they are female, and can take many forms.

Rape by gender classifies types of rape by the sex and/or gender of both the rapist and the victim. This scope includes both rape and sexual assault more generally. Most research indicates that rape affects women disproportionately, with the majority of people convicted being men; however, since the broadening of the definition of rape in 2012 by the FBI, more attention is being given to male rape, including females raping males.

Rape Type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse without consent

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.

LGBT rights in Kosovo

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights in Kosovo have improved in recent years, most notably with the adoption of the new Constitution, banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, homosexuality is still viewed by Kosovar society as a taboo topic.

Rape during the Bosnian War was a policy of systemic violence, which assumed a gender-targeted and mass form. While men from all ethnic groups committed rape, the vast majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used rape as an instrument of terror and key tactics as part of their programme of ethnic cleansing. Estimates of the number of women raped during the war range between 10,000 and 50,000, with the further estimate that for one reported rape there are 15 to 20 unreported cases.

Wartime sexual violence

Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as spoils of war; but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomenon has broader sociological motives. Wartime sexual violence may also include gang rape and rape with objects. It is distinguished from sexual harassment, sexual assaults, and rape committed amongst troops in military service.

Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the east of the country in particular, has been described as the "Rape Capital of the World," and the prevalence and intensity of all forms of sexual violence has been described as the worst in the world. Human Rights Watch defines sexual violence as "an act of a sexual nature by force, or by threat of force or coercion," and rape as "a form of sexual violence during which the body of a person is invaded, resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim, with a sexual organ, or of the anal or genital opening of the victim with any object or other part of the body."

War crimes in the Kosovo War War crimes committed during the Yugoslav civil War

A series of war crimes were committed during the Kosovo War. The forces of the Slobodan Milošević regime committed rape, killed many Albanian civilians and expelled them during the war, alongside the widespread destruction of civilian, cultural and religious property. According to the Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of the violations from January 1998 to April 1999 were attributable to Serbian police or the Yugoslav army. Violations also included abuses committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, such as kidnappings and summary executions of members of Serbian community, members of other minorities and Albanians who were considered traitors.

Atifete Jahjaga former president of Kosovo

Atifete Jahjaga is a Kosovar politician and stateswoman who served as the third President of Kosovo. She was the first female President of the Republic of Kosovo, the first non-partisan candidate and the youngest female head of state to be elected to the top office. She served as Deputy Director of the Kosovo Police, holding the rank of General Lieutenant Colonel, the most senior among women officers in Southeastern Europe.

Women in Malaysia receive support from the Malaysian government concerning their rights to advance, to make decisions, to health, education and social welfare, and to the removal of legal obstacles. The Malaysian government has ensured these factors through the establishment of Ministry of National Unity and Social Development in 1997. This was followed by the formation of the Women's Affairs Ministry in 2001 to recognise the roles and contributions of Malaysian women.

Violence against men consists of violent acts that are disproportionately or exclusively committed against men. Men are overrepresented as both victims and perpetrators of violence. Sexual violence against men is treated differently than that committed against women in most societies and is largely unrecognized by international law.

Violence against women in Guatemala Public health issue of violent acts against women

Violence against women in Guatemala reached severe levels during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), and the continuing impact of that conflict has contributed to the present high levels of violence against women in that nation. During the armed conflict, rape was used as a weapon of war.

Prosecution of gender-targeted crimes is the legal proceedings to prosecute crimes such as rape and domestic violence. The earliest documented prosecution of gender-based/targeted crimes is from 1474 when Sir Peter von Hagenbach was convicted for rapes committed by his troops. However, the trial was only successful in indicting Sir von Hagenbach with the charge of rape because the war in which the rapes occurred was "undeclared" and thus the rapes were considered illegal only because of this. Gender-targeted crimes continued to be prosecuted, but it was not until after World War II when an international criminal tribunal- the International Military Tribunal for the Far East - were officers charged for being responsible of the gender-targeted crimes and other crimes against humanity. Despite the various rape charges, the Charter of the Tokyo Tribunal did not make references to rape, and rape was considered as subordinate to other war crimes. This is also the situation for other tribunals that followed, but with the establishments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), there was more attention to the prosecution of gender-targeted crimes with each of the statutes explicitly referring to rape and other forms of gender-targeted violence.

Women in Europe

The evolution and history of European women coincide with the evolution and the history of Europe itself. According to the Catalyst, 51.2% of the population of the European Union in 2010 is composed of women.

Garentina Kraja was Political Adviser to President of the Republic of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga.

This article is about the Cabinet of Atifete Jahjaga, the President of Kosovo.

Human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The human rights record of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised over a number of years by intergovernmental organisations including the United Nations Human Rights Council, the European Court of Human Rights and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as well as international and domestic non-governmental organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised for ethnic and religious discrimination in its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities such as the Romani people and the Jewish people. The government has also been criticised for its treatment of Internally Displaced Persons following the Bosnian War and its failure to provide asylum seekers with resources such as food, shelter and medical assistance. According to BH Novinari, the Bosnian Journalists’ Association, freedom of the media is an issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with journalists facing attacks, threats and pressure from government. Human rights non-government organisations have also reported interference in their work from the government. The Bosnian government has been criticised by the European Union for its slow response to domestically prosecute war crimes from the Bosnian War following the closure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in December 2017.

References

  1. ↑ An Approach to the Kosovo Post-War Rehabilitation Process from a Gender Perspective, QUADERNS DE CONSTRUCCIÓ DE PAU Nº 2, escola de cultura de pau, page 5.
  2. ↑ First Female Elected President, Kosovo
  3. ↑ Koha, "Në krye të Policisë së Kosovës, Atifete Jahjaga" Shqip TIME.mk 16 October 2010 (accessed 6 April 2011)
  4. ↑ "Atifete Jahjaga zgjidhet presidente e Republikës" Telegrafi.com 7 April 2011 (accessed 6 April 2011)
  5. ↑ "Kush do të na udhëheq" Telegrafi.com 7 April 2011 (accessed 7 April 2011)
  6. ↑ "Women Gain Traction in Kosovo's Business Sector | Transforming Lives | Kosovo | U.S. Agency for International Development". www.usaid.gov. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  7. ↑ "Kosovo launches drive to encourage women to claim property rights". Reuters. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  8. 1 2 "Serb Gang-Rapes in Kosovo Exposed". Human Rights Watch. 2000-03-20. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  9. ↑ "Ending the Shame of Kosovo's Rape Victims". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  10. 1 2 "In Kosovo, legal recognition of war-time sexual violence survivors after 18 years". UN Women. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
  11. 1 2 "Kosovo's battered women trapped in vicious cycle in 'black hole' of..." Reuters. Retrieved 2018-02-20.
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