December 8, 2023
Amnesty International has recently published the report “From paper to practice: Kosovo must fulfill its commitments to survivors of domestic violence”. This report gives us an overview of the situation of handling cases of domestic violence and offers recommendations for the Government of Kosovo and each actor.
During this report, it was found that the state has failed to properly support survivors to leave abusive situations. The state response to these cases is not sufficiently focused on survivors, as required by the Istanbul Convention.
This report states that Kosovo’s policies neglect survivors’ needs for long-term support and capacities to live independent lives.
This situation necessarily reflects on insufficient and underfunded shelters to enable a shelter to function better.
LGBTI+ people are confronted every day with hate speech, which brings physical, psychological, economic and sexual violence from family, society and institutions. Individuals of these communities are harassed, threatened and discriminated against by every spectrum of society.
Although reports to the police are few, this shows us that LGBTI+ people do not trust state institutions, and those cases that are presented are often not written up, investigations are not initiated and it is not specified that violence is happening to you because of your gender identity and sexual orientation.
The situation of LGBTI+ persons is even more precarious as there is no specialized LGBTI+ shelter in Kosovo and they are forced to seek protection and shelter in Albania, which are not always available and accessible, says the Amnesty report International.
CEL supports the recommendations from this report, especially those related to state authorities related to LGBTI+ persons. One of them is the construction of a shelter for LGBTI+ persons, for which CEL Kosova and CSGD have been advocating for several years.
We join the call that the government should intensify efforts to create specialized shelter for LGBTI+ people. In the meantime, ensure that LGBTI+ survivors of domestic violence have access to other safe housing, psychosocial support and other forms of support needed to be able to leave abusive families or partners, as stated in the Amnesty International report .
