A Vetevendosje member was dismissed in 2013, due to sexual harassment

Members of the main opposition party in Kosovo, Vetevendosje, have highlighted cases of sexual harassment in their working environment in an effort to raise awareness of the widespread phenomenon in the country.

“There has been harassment, this has not been a general culture that has not been acceptable, but it has happened, from a small number of people. These harassments we've heard from the girls' complaints directly included”, said BIRN, Nazle Bala, leader of the Women's Women's Women's Secretariat in Vetevendosje.

Her statement came after Albin Kurti, the party's leader, on Thursday's show life in Kosovo, said his party needs an ethical code to deal with sexual harassment.

“Vetevendosje Offices have had no immunity from unacceptable expressions and chauvinistic male communications to women and girls, who they put in a kind of embarrassing position in the workplace”, Kurti said.

Kurt's statement made headlines in social media, but Dielez Arifi, a Vetevendosje activist, told BIRN that “must be clarified that gender discrimination, inequality or harassment is not the same as sex”.

The many reactions that have come to address this topic have come because of this string”, she said.

Bala said that harassment was often not direct and was sometimes followed by women's refusal. “We have learned about these harassments from the girls' complaints directly included”, she explained.

Asked whether any of these cases were criminalised, Bala declared that one person was dismissed by the party in 2013 after a complaint.

She said sexual harassment remains a challenging issue and will need time and energy to create a space in which such cases will be addressed and denounced.

” The fact that we've started talking publicly about this as Movement, we want to break this taboo before society closes its eyes to”.

“We need to achieve an environment that does not judge the denounciatory, but the denounced”, Bala said, calling for support from other parts of society and especially the media.

Arifi told BIRN that she and her friends had experienced such situations. She noted that while Vetevendosje is not a shelter for harassment, it is not immune to it.

I, or my friends where I was present, have been a target of harassment (in the space of action), inappropriate vocabulary, or excessive compliment”, she told BIRN.

This happens in and out of Movement. All these behaviors create an inadequate environment for the engagement of girls and women. At times, this behavior may be unconscious, but it is still harmful, and society must be aware of the”, it concluded.

Arifi said that women activists of Vetevendosje should be at the forefront of denouncing this phenomenon, “inside and outside of Movement”, adding: “To be able to denouncing from outside, we must start within the” Movement.