82 children were mistreated for 6 months, many people out of fear hesitate to report

Kosovo police report on Online Economy that 16 of them have been cases of minor bodily injury.

And according to data from the Kosovo Statistics Agency 61.4 percent of children have experienced physical violence, physical punishment, or psychological violence.

These figures point to a high degree of child violence, Donjet Kelmendi, the Coalition for Child Protection Director, said in an interview for Online Economy.

Kelmendi says that many others for fear of stigmatism are reluctant to report violence.

This percentage speaks of a very high, alarming degree of exercising child violence in family environments. The bad news is that only a very small number of these cases are reported to Kosovo institutions, whether to Kosovo police or the Centres for Social Work, so the data that is presented for reported cases is very small if we compare them to Mondays that were submitted according to the survey or research that the Kosovo Statistics Agency has implemented”, she has said.

The fear of family stigma, of society and community, many of such cases remain hidden and remain unreported within families”, Kelmendi stressed.

According to Kelmendi, the reasons the violence cases are not reported are many. She even points out that domestic violence is still considered a method of disciplining children.

“Arsyet for failing to report children victim to violence or physical punishment or even psychological violence are many, one thing we should mention is that domestic violence in our families is still considered to be child discipline management, so it doesn't get violent, for other cases that are very serious cases of sexual abuse, the reasons there are other non-representational cases because these are serious abuse”, she said.

Kelmendi mentioned that violence against children is expressed even by those called to protect themselves.

And it's also unacceptable that violence is exercised by professionals who are about child protection, or child education, where they are called by law to protect children and it's sorry and unacceptable that we have cases that are very often reported even in the media of child violence, whether by teachers in educational institutions or even by other professionals who work in child protection, Kelmendi said.

The KMF director stresses how the coalition has repeatedly called for cases of violence against children to be reported.

“We have called for topics like violence to be treated as particular themes in schools, so children know what violence is the forms of violence where they report them and report violence, in order to educate the new generation that violence is unacceptable that over the years gradually reduce violence against children”, it concluded.