In this article Amal discusses the post conflict region of Cyprus. She is a student journalist with us on a placement organised by the Oxford University Career Services. This article was edited by Cassia Jefferson from Oxford University as well using Lex.page.
🎧 listen to Amal's backstory here - she discusses her motivation & research as well.
Domestic Abuse and Femicide: Gender based violence in post-conflict Kosovo
Kosovo is the second worst country in Europe to be a woman.
Liridona Ademaj was killed on November 29, 2023 in a car with her husband and two children. Her murder was initially reported to be the result of a robbery, but further investigation suggests her death to be the work of a hitman hired by her husband. Her husband is Naim Murseli, a political advisor to Behxet Pacollu, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Her murder incited several hundred people to gather in Pristina in protest. They demanded more governmental effort in preventing and punishing gender-based violence. Demonstrators carried signs calling for the killing of women to be “treated as a national emergency”.
Gender-based violence is a pervasive issue in Kosovar society. When they took office in 2021, the current government recognised domestic violence to be one of the biggest issues in the country. In a survey conducted by the OSCE Mission in 2019, it was found that 54% of women reported that they have experienced physical, psychological or sexual violence from the age of 15 at the hands of an intimate partner. 64% of women viewed violence by partners, acquaintances or strangers to be very common or fairly common. Femicide is a significant issue with at least 74 cases from 2017 to 2020.
Unfortunately, there have been several prominent cases of violence against women and girls in the past five years. Armenda Aliu was killed by her husband in August 2019 when he shot her 14 times. Marigona Osmani, 18, was raped and tortured by her partner and his friend before dying on August 22nd, 2021.
Gender-based violence in Kosovo can be linked back to its experience as a post-conflict society. This article is too short to fully examine the ways in which conflict in Kosovo contributed to social expectations around gender in Kosovo today. One impact of the conflict in Kosovo is that it led to a strong sense of nationalism with the ethnic Albanian majority striving for sovereignty and autonomy from Serbia. Joane Nagel argues that nationalism is often conservative as it tends to aim to “retraditionalise”. Tradition is seen as a foundation for nation-building and this tradition can be patriarchal.
As such, contemporary Kosovar society can be patriarchal. There is an expectation of women to prioritise marriage and their husbands, to be obedient and fulfill traditional gender roles. Women’s behaviour often reflects upon the honour of her husband or her father, something which is very important in Kosovar society. In some cases, this leads to men using violence to regulate their wife’s or daughter’s behaviour and prevent societal shame. Reporting domestic violence also holds a social stigma with 48% of women believing it is a private matter.
In Kosovo, being a financially independent woman and not marrying can be difficult. One reason for this is that wealth and property are usually inherited by sons with nothing going to their daughters. As a result, women do not have the same type of familial financial support. In 2021, only 18% of property was owned by women compared to 79% owned by men. Women in abusive relationships face socioeconomic barriers when trying to escape their situation. This is not helped by the fact that there is insufficient systematic long-term support for survivors to access necessary employment or housing, as reported by Amnesty International in 2023.
Women’s abilities to leave dangerous situations are further impeded by a lack of knowledge on support that they are able to access. A 2019 OSCE survey found that most women out of the 2000 surveyed were not informed about what they are able to do if they experience violence. This prevents survivors from being able to make informed decisions and from making a plan to leave the dangerous situation in which they are in. The police also often fail to inform those that come to them and report their abusers. A government survey in 2019 found that 79 out of 100 police officers did not mention the option for victims of domestic violence to go to shelters.
There are eight shelters for women experiencing domestic abuse in Kosovo and they are run by NGOs. They provide food, shelter, counselling sessions and transportation to court. The shelters tend to receive a lack of consistent funding from the government, which can significantly impact their ability to support vulnerable women. Government funding is often delayed and fails to come at the start of the year. As a result, in 2022, shelters received no funding until April.
A shortcoming of shelters is that they are not accessible to everyone. They often do not have staff that speak Romani, which can be an additional barrier to women from minority ethnic groups who are trying to escape domestic abuse. Also, shelters tend to only be available to women who have made police reports, which not all survivors do. The director of the Centre for Social Work at the Municipality of Pristina said that it is usually elderly women who choose not to make reports to the police because they feel ashamed for not having reported their abuse already. The director of the shelter in Novo Brdo observed that professional women and those with higher education are also more hesitant to report because they feel ashamed that they are in an abusive situation. Only allowing women who have made police reports can prevent many from seeking help and leaving their abusive situations. It also violates human rights law that states should provide support to survivors of gender-based violence regardless of whether they have made a police report.
Survivors can also be put off from going to a shelter because of how isolating they are. Typically, women are not permitted to leave during their stay other than if they have work and are required to hand in their mobile phones. This is supposed to be for their safety and the survivors are allowed to phone their family a couple of times a week in front of a staff member. This can cause survivors to feel isolated and can be problematic in times of distress and can cause them to leave these shelters earlier than they are ready. As such, these shelters are not best equipped to provide support for women experiencing gender-based violence.
The Kosovo police objective in cases of domestic abuse and sexual violence is to protect the victim and to prevent further violence. They are often the first point of contact for a survivor seeking to report and escape an abusive situation so it is important that they fulfill their role. In recent years, effort has been made to improve the support that the police provide to victims but there are still several limitations. Standard Operation Procedures for Protection from Domestic Violence were introduced in 2013 and they aim to create a coordinated system of different institutions effectively working together to support survivors of domestic violence. These are seen to be a good step forward in dealing with gender-based violence and these efforts have led to increased reporting of domestic abuse.
The improvements to the police are not the only factor leading to increased reporting; it is also the result of women’s groups and activists organising protests and creating public support for survivors. Despite these efforts, there is still a long way to go in improving police response to reports of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Police responses to reports of domestic abuse are often inadequate because Kosovar cultural expectations of gender roles shape police responses to reports of domestic abuse. Police officers may not take reports of domestic abuse as ‘serious’ unless there are visible injuries. This means that reports of non-physically violent abuse are not treated with sufficient attention. One woman reported to Amnesty International that when she reported her husband for psychological and economic abuse, she was told that “there is no such thing” and that her husband had the right to deny her financial support. Both male and female police officers may also make women feel guilty for reporting their abuse, as reported by Amnesty. This treatment of those that report domestic abuse prevents women from seeking help.
Sexual violence is heavily underreported. A lot of police officers fail to take sexual violence seriously. The Kosovo Women’s Network reported that police officers had joked about a woman who reported being groped, viewing this to be too insignificant to be reported. When reporting being raped to the police, another woman was asked whether she was a virgin or if she enjoyed being raped. This treatment of survivors is, in part, a result of an overall lack of training for institutions in responding to survivors of sexual violence.
Women in Kosovo experience significant levels of gender-based violence because of social expectations of gender and insufficient institutional support. This can be seen to be the result of Kosovo’s status as a young, post-conflict nation. Albanian nationalism often upholds traditional and conservative ideals which can in turn foster an environment in which domestic violence is not uncommon. It also creates a social stigma, preventing women from reaching out for help which is not aided by police interactions with survivors. Institutional responses to gender-based violence in Kosovo are improving but still have a long way to go.
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