The member organization of the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN), the Mitrovica Women’s Association for Human Rights (MWAHR), has advocated for gender-responsive budgeting in the municipality of South Mitrovica. During the public consultations on the 2024 budget and the forecasts for 2025/2026, women invited by MWAHR addressed the issues that directly affect women and girls.

Women’s demands for healthcare institutions include setting up a menopause counseling center, operationalizing mammography services, and contracting radiologists for early cancer detection.

Women entrepreneurs have requested tax reductions for small businesses, such as tailoring, hairdressing, agriculture, beekeeping, traditional food production, etc. They also advocated for lower interest rates for business loans and the creation of a dedicated fund to support women entrepreneurs through municipal cooperation with banks.

Additional demands include harmonizing inheritance laws and subsidy criteria for women who do not own property, planning specific subsidies for women-owned businesses, establishing a cooperative for the employment of victims of domestic violence, and providing training for municipal officials to prevent violence. In this context, the need for cooperation with NGOs to provide training for municipal officials regarding local and international mechanisms for protection from violence was emphasized.

It was also requested that the allocation of the budget for grants for civil society women’s groups be increased along with the increase in the amount of grants.

The request also included the needs of the Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities for the opening of a clothing business in the Roma neighborhood to employ Roma women and provide winter clothing for underprivileged children.

A few days ago, Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) has signed a contract with MWAHR for a new initiative which aims to engage men, women, girls and boys as full and equal partners in government planning, programming and budgeting. The project is titled “Gender budgeting, a transformative budget tool for municipal institutions”.

This initiative is part of the Gender Budget Watchdog Network’s action, supported by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).