Women
Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape and domestic violence against all persons, including rape of a relative or spouse. By law rape is punishable by two to 15 years in prison. EULEX noted that courts often applied penalties lighter than the legal minimum in rape cases and that law enforcement bodies rarely took steps to protect victims and witnesses. In addition, sentences were often further decreased by the appellate court. The Prosecution Victim Assistance Office reported an increased number of domestic violence cases, from 1,145 in 2020 to 1,374 from January to August. Instances of gender-based violence, including sexual violence and rape were rarely reported by survivors, frequently due to social stigma or lack of trust in authorities.
The law recognizes gender-based violence as a form of discrimination but lacks a definition of gender-based violence for use in criminal and civil proceedings. The Prosecution Victim Assistance Office helped to provide access to justice for survivors of all crimes, with a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, trafficking in persons, child abuse, and rape. In addition, each prosecutor’s office had a prosecutor who specialized in handling domestic violence cases. These prosecutors could apply risk-assessment tools to mitigate the risk of future abuse and were empowered to recommend harsher sentences for repeat offenders and violators of protective orders.
Police investigated cases of domestic violence before transferring them to prosecutors who make the determination on filing charges. The rate of prosecution was low, however, and sentences were often lowered on appeal. Advocates and court observers asserted prosecutors and judges favored family unification over survivor protection, with protective orders sometimes allowing the perpetrator to remain in the family home while a case was pending. Sentences ranged from judicial reprimands to up to five years’ imprisonment. The Pristina Basic Court held online hearings on domestic violence cases consistent with government COVID-19 pandemic measures.
In March, Sebahate Morina was killed by her former husband, Lulzim Sopi, 11 days after her daughter reported to police that her mother was being abused physically. In 2019, Sopi was indicted on domestic violence charges, and despite consistent violence against his wife, the Gjilan Basic Court, following a guilty plea by Sopi, imposed a criminal fine only. A civil restraining order against Sopi was active until three months before Morina’s reported murder. In March the Ombudsperson issued a report on the killing, finding authorities did not conduct a proper risk assessment and lacked coordination.
In August two men deposited the body of 18-year-old Marigona Osmani in front of a hospital in Ferizaj/Urosevac. Doctors confirmed Osmani had been raped and otherwise physically abused for at least two days and was already dead when discovered at the hospital. From the hospital’s security camera footage, Kosovo Police identified Dardan Krivaqa, Osmani’s husband, and Arber Sejdiu as suspects and arrested both two days later. Press reports indicated police had previously charged both men for multiple other violent offenses, including rape, bodily injury, and attempted murder. The incident sparked nationwide protests against perceived police inaction. As of September the two suspects remained in custody pending further investigation.
The government licensed and supported 10 NGOs that assisted women and child survivors of domestic violence. The government maintained a budget line for financial support of shelters, resolving a long-standing funding problem. Both NGOs and shelters reported timely receipt of funding.
The Office of the Prime Minister maintained a commission to recognize and compensate survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. The commission has granted pensions to more than 900 women since 2018. The SPRK designated one prosecutor for cases of conflict-related sexual violence. Police maintained a unit for war crimes cases, including cases of conflict-related sexual violence.
Sexual Harassment: The law defines sexual harassment in civil and criminal proceedings. The criminal article on sexual harassment stipulates criminal proceedings are initiated upon a victim’s request and prison sentences are authorized for sexual harassment offenses against vulnerable victims. In cases where a crime is committed with the use of a weapon, the sentence may vary from one to five years in prison. The NGO Kosovo Women’s Network reported that implementation of sexual harassment laws was hampered by poorly defined procedures for filing complaints of harassment, and lack of clarity regarding which government bodies should receive these complaints.
According to women’s rights organizations, harassment was common at workplaces in both the public and private sectors, including in public institutions of higher education.
Reproductive Rights: There were no reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization on the part of government authorities.
Poor, marginalized, and illiterate individuals often had insufficient access to information on reproductive health. To address the problem, the government and the UN Population Fund created family planning curricula for all educational levels and began training educators to implement it.
The government requires transgender persons to undergo mandatory sterilization before changing their gender marker (see Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, below, for additional information).
The National Law on Reproductive Health obligates the government to provide access to sexual and reproductive health services for survivors of sexual violence, including survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. Emergency contraception was not always available as part of clinical management of rape. The Ministry of Health included emergency contraception on its list of essential drugs for health centers, but the UN Population Fund reported some centers did not always have the drugs available. The Kosovo Women’s Network reported it was unaware of emergency contraceptive services in the country. Survivors were assigned a “victim’s protection official” who assisted with both the criminal justice and medical treatment processes.
Discrimination: The law provides the same legal status and rights for women and men. The law requires equal pay for equivalent work. The law stipulates that partners in marriage and civil unions have equal rights to own and inherit property, but men usually inherited family property and other assets. In rare instances Kosovo-Albanian widows, particularly in rural areas, risked losing custody of their children due to a family custom requiring children and property to pass to the deceased father’s family while the widow returned to her birth family.
Relatively few women occupied upper-level management positions in business, police, or government. The Kosovo Women’s Network reported women were often subject to discriminatory hiring practices.
Gender-biased Sex Selection: The boy-to-girl ratio at birth was 108 boys to 100 girls. The government did not have policies to address the imbalance.
Systemic Racial or Ethnic Violence and Discrimination
The constitution prohibits discrimination based on racial or ethnic background. The constitution further allows for the adoption of interim measures to protect or advance the rights of minority or ethnic individuals or groups that suffer from discrimination. Reports of violence and discrimination against members of ethnic minority groups persisted. The law guarantees equal protection, without discrimination, on the grounds of race, color, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, relation to any community, property, economic and social condition, sexual orientation, birth, disability, or other personal status. The Law on Protection from Discrimination establishes a comprehensive system of protection from discrimination in the country and designates two entities – the Ombudsperson Institution, and the Office on Good Governance under the Prime Minister – as the administrative bodies responsible for resolving cases of discrimination, promoting equality, and monitoring the implementation of antidiscrimination measures. The criminal code contains provisions to classify as “hate acts” such offenses where race or ethnicity is a motivating factor.
According to the Ombudsperson Institution, although there is a good legal framework to protect racial and ethnic minorities, there were problems that prevent full and effective implementation and enforcement, including a lack of institutional capacity. Societal violence, as well as social and employment discrimination, persisted against Kosovo-Serb and other ethnic minority communities.
Through July, Kosovo Police reported six incidents of societal violence or discrimination targeting ethnic minorities, including the placement of wartime photos at the apartment building of a Serb returnee in Gjakove/Djakovica (see section 2.e., Status and Treatment of Internally Displaced Persons), and vandalism of an Orthodox Church in Pristina. In May the Kosovo Police approved a Manual for Handling Hate Crimes, and police investigations of incidents targeting ethnic minorities led to some arrests. The Kosovo-Serb community expressed concern that the government’s responses were not adequate.
The NGO Aktiv reported 48 incidents in the first six months targeting the Kosovo-Serb community and Serbian Orthodox Church sites, including property damage, burglaries and thefts, physical attacks and threats, and offensive graffiti. In August, the advocacy platform Empirica issued a press release demanding thorough investigations of unresolved cases, particularly those involving physical attacks against Kosovo Serbs. Serbian-language media regularly reported on incidents, including two attacks in July, one against a teenage boy by Kosovo Albanians in Vushtrri/Vucitrn and another against a displaced Serb visiting his property in Kline/Klina. In September Kosovo Police arrested several Kosovo Albanians, including minors, suspected of an assault targeting a group of Kosovo Serbs in Mitrovice/a South.
Harassment of Kosovo-Serb members of the Kosovo Security Force by other ethnic Serbs was commonplace, although usually the incidents were difficult to trace. Victims in most cases did not report the incidents to police for fear of escalation and retaliation. The Ministry of Defense and Kosovo Security Force leadership continued to take steps to protect Kosovo-Serb members, including better documentation of incidents, routine welfare checks by commanders, and attempts to improve the response of police and the Kosovo Intelligence Agency.
In December the Supreme Court annulled the basic and appeals court convictions against former member of parliament Ivan Todosijevic on charges of inciting intolerance and denying atrocities committed against ethnic Albanian civilians in 1999. The Supreme Court’s ruling annulled the previous sentence of two year’s imprisonment and ordered a retrial. Todosijevic was serving as the Minister of Local Government Administration in 2019 when he denied the occurrence of the well-known Recak/Racak massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians, during a public speech.
Access to justice for Kosovo Serbs continued to improve due to the 2017 integration of the judiciary system in the four northern Serb-majority municipalities and integration of Kosovo-Serb judges and staff in other basic courts in the country. The judiciary suffered from a lack of funding and support for members of minority communities. Poor or delayed translation in court proceedings, a backlog of cases in the north, nonexecution of court decisions, limited numbers of minority staff, and inconsistency between Albanian and Serbian translations of legislation continued to hinder the delivery of justice for Kosovo Serbs and other minority communities.
Ethnic minorities, including the Serb, Romani, Ashkali, Balkan-Egyptian, Turkish, Bosniak, Gorani, Croat, and Montenegrin communities, continued to face varying levels of institutional and societal discrimination in employment, education, social services, language use, freedom of movement, the right to return to their homes (for displaced persons), and other basic, legally stipulated rights. The Romani, Ashkali, and Balkan-Egyptian communities often lacked access to basic hygiene, medical care, and education and were heavily dependent on humanitarian aid for subsistence.
The Prime Minister’s Office of Community Affairs and the Ombudsperson Institution noted discrimination in public sector employment in almost all local and national institutions. Although the law mandates 10 percent of employees at the national level of government be ethnic minorities, their representation remained limited and generally confined to lower-level positions. Smaller communities, such as Gorani, Roma, Ashkali, and Balkan-Egyptians, were particularly underrepresented.
The Office of the Language Commissioner continued to monitor the implementation of legislation that conferred equal status to the country’s two official languages, Albanian and Serbian, as well as other official languages at the local level, including Bosnian and Turkish. The commissioner reported municipal administrations and central government institutions remained inconsistent in implementing provisions of national language laws, which resulted in unequal access to public services, information, employment, justice, and other rights.
Lack of translation or poor translation remained a problem with regards to numerous laws, signage in public institutions, and communication in court proceedings. Courts often failed to provide adequate translation and interpretation services to minority defendants and witnesses and did not provide adequate translation of statute and court documents as required by law. Government efforts to address these problems remained inconsistent.
Children
Birth Registration: Children acquire citizenship from citizen parents or by birth in the country, including those with parents whose citizenship was not documented. Those not registered at birth were primarily from the Romani, Ashkali, and Balkan-Egyptian communities. UNICEF indicated lack of registration could adversely affect a child’s access to social assistance, particularly for repatriated children. Children who were not registered were considered stateless.
Education: The law requires equal conditions for all schoolchildren and recognizes minority students’ right to public education in their native language through secondary school. This law was not enforced. Bosniak, Croat, Gorani, Montenegrin, Romani, and Turkish community leaders cited the unavailability of textbooks and other materials in the Serbian, Bosnian, and Turkish languages, occasionally turning to Albanian-language curricula or curricula sponsored by Serbia or Turkey to educate students.
Child Abuse: The criminal code does not specifically criminalize child abuse but addresses various elements of child abuse, including in sections on sexual assault, rape, trafficking in persons, and child pornography, among others. Penalties range from five to 20 years’ imprisonment. The incidence of child abuse was unknown due to social stigma and lack of reliable data.
UNICEF, the Ombudsperson Institution, the Statistics Agency, and responsible ministries jointly created a unified data management system to track child-related information in the justice, education, and social welfare sectors.
In July 2019 a nine-year-old boy from Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje was raped and killed. The boy’s mother had reported his rape, identifying the perpetrator, to police prior to the killing, but the alleged perpetrator was released after questioning and never rearrested. Six months later, the child was found dead in Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje. The alleged perpetrator was then arrested for rape and aggravated murder. The defendant was sentenced provisionally in 2020, with final sentencing still pending in August. The government allocated 20,000 euros ($23,000) to the victim’s family to help alleviate their financial situation. Following the trial, police and prosecutors began jointly reviewing all procedures and actions in child abuse cases. Disciplinary investigations were initiated against two prosecutors involved in the case over suspicion they failed to address the claims of abuse in a timely and efficient manner. One of the prosecutors was disciplined by the Prosecutorial Council. A human rights lawyer took up the case and sought to hold officials accountable for inaction.
Child, Early, and Forced Marriage: The law allows persons to marry at age 16 with parental consent. Although there is no official data on early and forced child marriages, it was a common practice, including within the Roma, Ashkali, Balkan-Egyptian, Bosniak, and Gorani communities. According to the Kosovo Agency of Statistics and UNICEF, while the overall percentage of women between the ages of 20 and 24 who married before age 18 was low, the percentage for women in the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities was disproportionately high, at one in three. According to a government report that focused specifically on Romani, Ashkali and Egyptian communities, approximately 12 percent of children, mostly girls, married before the age of 15. High poverty levels in these communities contributed to these rates.
Sexual Exploitation of Children: The law prohibits possession, production, and distribution of child pornography. Persons who produce, use, or involve a child in making or producing pornography may receive a prison sentence of one to five years. The distribution, promotion, transmission, offer, or display of child pornography is punishable by six months’ to five years’ imprisonment. Possession or procurement of child pornography is punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.
The minimum legal age for consensual sex is 16. Statutory rape is a criminal offense punishable by five to 20 years in prison. Terre des Hommes Kosovo reported that national mechanisms for identification and referral of children who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation are ineffective. The organization noted children transported from Albania for street work were inadequately identified as potential victims of trafficking or children at risk of trafficking. The municipality of Pristina established a special task force intended to address these issues and provide protection and necessary services for children engaged in street work.
International Child Abductions: The country is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases.html.
Anti-Semitism
Approximately 50 Jewish persons resided in the country, according to Jewish community representatives. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.
Trafficking in Persons
See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/.
Persons with Disabilities
The constitution and law prohibit discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities, and provide for equal access to education, employment, and other state services. The government did not effectively enforce these provisions, and persons with disabilities faced discrimination and were unable to access education, health services, public buildings, and transportation on an equal basis with others.
Educational options for children with disabilities were limited. UNICEF, through its implementing partner Handi-Kos, assessed 30 municipalities and found that primary and lower secondary school buildings had numerous architectural barriers preventing inclusion and enrollment of children with physical disabilities into regular education. For example, 56 percent of schools did not provide a wheelchair ramp and 74 percent lacked accessible toilets. According to Handi-Kos, approximately 38,000 children with disabilities did not attend school.
According to Handi-Kos, access to health and rehabilitative services, including social assistance and assistive devices for persons with disabilities, remained insufficient.
Physical access to public institutions remained difficult, even after the implementation of bylaws on building access and administrative support. Handi-Kos reported that municipal compliance with a mandate on access to government buildings remained in the single digits. The parliament building itself was not accessible, and one member of parliament in a wheelchair had to be carried into the assembly hall by colleagues. Likewise, in the municipality of Suhareka/Suva Reka, persons in wheelchairs had access only to the ground floor of the municipal building, but not floors containing the mayoral and directorate offices.
Although the law requires equal access to transportation for persons with disabilities, the Ombudsperson Institution published a report in 2020 criticizing unequal access to inter-urban transportation for blind persons, despite the legal requirements. The report found public transportation accessibility measures for reserved seating, cost, and enforcement insufficient.
In June, the government established a Council for Persons with Disabilities as a government advisory body, with representatives from relevant ministries and NGOs, to improve enforcement of disability rights. The council held its first meeting in June, and its workplan includes implementation of the National Strategy 2013-2023.
Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
The constitution and law prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the “public and private spheres of social life, including political and public life, employment, education, health, economy, social benefits, sports, culture and other areas.” When the motivation for a crime is based on gender, sexual orientation, or perceived affinity of the victim with persons who are targets of such hostility, the law considers motivation to be an aggravating circumstance.
According to human rights NGOs, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community faced overt discrimination in employment, housing, determination of statelessness, and access to education and health care.
The NGO Center for Equality and Liberty reported that societal pressure persuaded most LGBTQI+ persons to conceal their sexual orientation or gender identity. The center also noted increased homophobic public reactions in social media since the introduction of country-wide measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the year, three cases of violence targeting LGBTQI+ were reported to the Kosovo Police and subsequently referred to the Prosecutor’s Office. Two were registered as incitement of hatred, discord, and intolerance based on religious, racial, or ethnic grounds, and one was registered as an incitement of threat. In May an unidentified individual threatened the life of LGBTQI+ activist Lend Mustafa in Pristina’s main square. Mustafa reported the unknown individual spat at him and shouted threats to kill him. Although police initiated an investigation, no charges had been filed as of December.
Police were inclusive and accepting of LGBTQI+ and other minority communities in their public messaging, and senior police officials participated in the annual pride parade. Pristina municipality established a drop-in center in 2020 and allocated funding for construction of the first-ever shelter for at-risk LGBTQI+ persons during the year.
In 2019 the appeals court upheld a basic court ruling permitting the change of the sex marker on identity documents from female to male for a citizen living abroad. In total, two citizens have changed their identity documents following lengthy court procedures, while four citizens’ requests for change of identity documents have not been resolved. The government requires transgender persons to undergo mandatory sterilization before changing their gender marker.