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Kosova opinions and alerts 1998
Statement on the violation of the women's and children's human rights

Centre for protection of women and children
Prishtine

18 September, 1998

The political and social situation of Kosova in the past 8 years has affected drastically women's and children's human rights.
Individual rights of women and children according to CEDAW and CRC are violated also.

As the Albanians of Kosova are struggling for their collective and individual fundamental human rights and freedoms,

  1. Women are deprived from the right to health, to freedom of speech, to education and public meeting, to free circulation and to be employed, to freedom from domestic and political violence, to the essential right to live and to the right to physical intergity,
  2. Children are deprived from the right to be born and to grow in peace, to the right to have a citizenship and to be educated, to the right to have health care and to be protected, to the right to be fed and to be treated as decent person of the society, to the essential right to live and to physical integrity.
Therefore the position of these two groups has aggravated completely during the past 7 months of 1998, due to the war situation, when they were the first massacred victims and as they have become now live victims by losing the right to have a home and to survive.

Almost 60% of the victims of this severe war are children and women. When speaking of the Internally Displaced Persons, they make up to 88% of the total number of IDPs. After the research work, CPWC has come to the result that 63% of the IDPs are children, age 0 to 18, and 25% are women of different ages. Human catastrophe is faced already in Kosova, because these people live rough in the open, homeless, insecure, facing starvation, epidemics and danger from attacks and shelling on them. Forced ethnic cleansing has affected exactly women and children with lack of food, clothing, personal hygiene, medicaments and health care, by exposing them to frequent deaths, hitting especially pregnant women and children after confinement. Many of women and children have been parts of execution and CPWC brings before you the case of the 11 ASLLANI FAMILY MEMBERS, when 8 children and 3 women were killed in Malisheva region as IDPs.

CPWC considers that so far 30% of the population of Kosova has rapidly become homeless. Kosova Albanian government does not have the legitimacy to either protect or periodically shelter these people. Serb authorities chase them, intimidate and create fear to host families also. Therefore, CPWC expects subsistence measures of protection, for the life of these two groups is in danger.

Centre for Protection of Women and Children urges the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mrs. Mary Robinson in person, and the Special Raporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Mr, Jiri Dienstbier to report and take measures according to UDHR, UN Charter, CEDAW and CRC.

On behalf of CPWC

Signed by,
Sevdie Ahmeti Co-Director and HR Project Manager

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