80 percent of Kosovo citizens accept violence against women

So it was said at the conference organised by German organisation GIZ and foundation “Jahjaga” with the “theme ensuring equal access of women to justice”.

Germany's ambassador to Kosovo, Christian Heldt, said legal gaps within Kosovo's justice system have done that women in Kosovo compared to men do not enjoy equal access to justice.

According to him, impunity to domestic violence has led to small reporting of domestic violence cases.

The German state representative in Kosovo said that with the goal of equal access to women in justice, more must be worked for women to be offered knowledge of their legal right.

“Although adopted laws imposed on the stoneel for improvement, including aspects of sexual harassment and sanctioning family violence in the Penal Code, we still have a gap between the law on paper and the law in practice. Traditional views on gender roles and the expressions of blaming the victim and therefore referred to the conference for survivors of sexual violence for me this is the most obvious example because survivors who are victims of violence to be those who feel bad about what happened to them, because the leaders are the ones who should feel bad, the same is true of family violence from 2015 to 2018 statistics that only 40 per cent of domestic violence cases have ended with the identity of only 15 cases of rape are reported in Kosovo, that is the reality of the 112x>

Former Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga said it is the disaster that there are still women enduring injustice in Kosovo, as they knew what to do and could not take measures to ensure justice.

As director of the Jahjaga Foundation, she has estimated that a functioning state is when the justice system offers protection of women from domestic violence but also sexual abuse.

Jahjaga said the justice system in Kosovo offers free services and this should be known for women and girls in Kosovo, until according to her, there should be greater co-operation of all institutions in order for the entire chain of access to justice to function properly.

There are many cases that women and girls in Kosovo unfortunately face injustice because they do not know what to do, do not have self - sufficient means to cover the expenses of any lawyer, or perhaps for various circumstances they cannot take measures to ensure justice. There are many cases of domestic violence or sexual harassment that are neither reported at all, there are many cases of withdrawals of claims resulting from various threats or uncertainties. And unfortunately we have cases of fatality”, Jahjaga said.

That reporting violence against women in Kosovo is very low, and the executive director of the Kosovar Centre for Gender Studies, Luljeta Demolli, said, under which the acceptance of violence against women in Kosovo is over 80 per cent.

Even the interinstitutional chain that may prevent violence against women does not function properly, she says.

Whatever we've noted is the rate is very high the acceptance of violence in Kosovo is over 80 percent of Kosovo's citizens think that a slap is nothing on a woman's face, while if we look at the statistics of violence reporting against women are very low. From 2009 to this year we have mostly 1300 and something in 2009 were 900 cases. We see a Kosovo, a community that doesn't react to violent cases, what we see further is a chain that works on the start call when you accept the call until you send the person who's been using violence to jail, but it doesn't function properly”, Demolli said.

The conference with the “theme directed ensuring the equal approach of women to justice” was organised within the 20th anniversary of the partnership between Kosovo and the German organisation GIZ.