Today, political entities in Kosova, signed the Declaration on the Inclusion of Women in Electoral Management.

Political Entities Sign Declaration on the Inclusion of Women in Electoral Management

On 16 September 2015, political entities of the Republic of Kosova signed the Declaration on the Inclusion of Women in Electoral Management. The ceremony was organized by the Institute Democracy for Development (D4D).
    By signing  this Declaration, political entities have commited to tackle the issue of gender inequality in electoral processes. While this Declaration was signed by representatives of 10 political entities that attended the ceremony, it will be open for signature for one month, enabling others who could not be present today to sign it.
     The signed declaration aims to increase women’s participation in electoral management bodies from the national level, local level and in the polling stations. At the national level, it aims at achieving a participation of no less than 40% and up, until there is equal gender participation for both genders. Further, the declaration entails the commitment of political entities for producing strategies and plans for increasing women’s participation and improving the gender structures inside parties.
      The signing of the Declaration on the Inclusion of Women in Electoral Management is an activity that D4D has developed in cooperation with International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and aims to raise awareness of society on benefits of equal gender participation in electoral processes.
     Additionally to the  political entities, representatives of institutions, accredited embassies in Kosovo, international organizations and civil society, including Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN), were also present at the ceremony of signing the declaration.
 

 

 

Gender Coordination Group Discusses Women’s Property Rights

 Coordination of the many organizations, donors, and government agencies working on women and property rights has been identified as a major need. Organizations working on similar causes need to be informed about each other’s activities, towards improving cooperation. The Gender Coordination Group (GCG) for Property Rights Program (PRP) was reactivated this year, building on the platform that existed last year.
    GCG members include people from different sectors, including civil society, government and donor agencies, that are working in areas relevant to property rights and women’s rights. Members meet bimonthly to discuss and plan activities regarding women’s property rights.  GCG’s mission is to develop activities that will help strengthen legislation and court procedures to better protect women’s property rights; change cultural attitudes and behaviours about women’s property rights; and promote opportunities to engage as economic actors.
   On 2 Sep. GCG held a bimonthly meeting co-hosted by the Agency for Gender Equality and the USAID-funded, TetraTech-implemented Property Rights Program. GCG members presented activities held in recent months. They also made plans regarding the future. 
   The Property Rights Program presented information about Social Behaviour Change Campaigns (SBCC), which are campaigns that use data, as well as creative ideas to focus on changing or positively influencing social norms in support of long-term, sustainable behaviour change within a population. The presentation sought to get GCG members “on the same page” regarding the meaning of SBCC, so that if they initiate joint campaigns in the future, all group members have a shared understanding and approach.To this end, participants also completed a questionnaire regarding SBCC, identifying their existing knowledge and what they would like to learn about SBCC during an upcoming workshop organized by the Property Rights Program.  
   Other information shared during this meeting included:

  •  KWN shared the information for the campaign “I Dare to Speak” which aims to inform citizens about their legal rights, particularly women’s rights, and existing gender equality mechanisms through artistic plays, monologues, and songs.
  • ATRC has an open call for Rapid funds (max $25,000), which will be open through 2017. Through this initiative, ATRC is going to fund organizations that need “ad hoc funds” for a campaign or to react to an emergency; ATRC also gave two grants to BIRN and Advocacy Center For Democratic Culture (ACDC).
  •  A representative from the Ombudsperson’s office said that the office is ready for cooperation and to help with cases for women’s empowerment.
  •   Sabrije Bytyqi from parliament assembly said they are pushing further cases regarding gender equality and that they will continue to do so.
 The next meeting of GCG will be in November. Participants were encouraged to be in contact and to share information regarding their activities related to women’s property rights via email in the meantime. 

Gender Equality Officers Hone Skills in Gender Budgeting

With the new Law on Gender Equality (Law 05/L-020), Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) has become a legal obligation in Kosovo. While GRB is now required of all budget organizations, only a few have the institutional know-how on how to properly institutionalize GRB, a strategy for mainstreaming gender in budget documents and processes.
    Fortunately, every budget organization (every ministry and every municipality) has a Gender Equality Officer (GEO), responsible for mainstreaming gender in all policies, strategies, and budgets. On 9 September, the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) in collaboration with the Agency for Gender Equality (AGE), organized a training on GRB for GEOs of all ministries and municipalities in the Republic of Kosovo.
Edi Gusia, Head of the Division for Monitoring and Evaluation at AGE, and Igballe Rogova, Executive Director of KWN opened the workshop. They emphasized the importance of GRB for ministries and municipalities.
    During the workshop participants reviewed legal and practical definitions of GRB; learned a methodology for “doing” GRB that has already been piloted in two municipalities and two ministries in Kosovo; received information regarding the requirements of the Budget Circular for 2016/02; heard the experience of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in including GRB in an annex to their 2016 Budget; and subsequently had the opportunity to apply what they learned in a practical exercise: reviewing medium term budget planning documents and 2016 budgets from a gender perspective.
Nicole Farnsworth and Donjeta Morina from KWN led the workshop, assisting GEOs during the practical exercise.
    “Your ministries and municipalities depend on you in this process,” said Donjeta Morina. “Your expertise can help integrate GRB in all budget documents and processes.” She emphasized that GRB is a critical tool in bringing forward issues of gender equality Kosovo-wide.
KWN hopes that by using the skills developed through the workshop GEOs can better support their respective budget organizations in collecting data disaggregated by gender, which will inform the medium term budget planning documents starting in January.
    Indeed Edi Gusia encouraged all GEOs to collect and send to AGE a brief report on wages and salaries expenditures for women and men; wages and salaries expenditures based on the level of pay for women and men, towards identifying whether women and men tend to be concentrated at different decision-making levels; and subsidies and transfers by women and men beneficiaries. Such a gender analysis of these key budget categories is a crucial first step in identifying inequalities so that they can be addressed through medium and long-term planning in the future.

Albanian and Serbian women from Novo Brdo join forces to promote tourism

Tourism is a crucial factor for the economic development of Novo Brdo. The inhabitants of this region have started to intensively work on promoting their tourism since 2007. Nevertheless, women still continue to be only partially included in this process. The Centre for Rural Development (CRD) decided to gather ten Albanian and ten Serbian women in order to join their forces in promoting the tourism of Novo Brdo. First, they organized three trainings for women participants in topics such as: developing of skills in leading households, procedures of registering businesses and providing quality services.
   On 4 September 2015, CRD organized a small fair in the Information Center building of Novo Brdo where they presented their products.
“The tourism in Novo Brdo needs to advance as soon as possible since our women know how to cook very delicious traditional food and how to welcome visitors. We, the two communities, work together, and the projects we have- we implement together, be that within the municipality, in the field. Therefore, we will advance tourism together as well,” said Shefkije Mehmeti, Director of CRD.
During this fair, women also used the opportunity to discuss about their future plans. Since the booth will be placed near the building of the Municipality of Novo Brdo, women will have the opportunity to place their products for sale. The Municipality will help them by covering for them all expenses for the first two months of its opening. Women participants were also interested for the application procedures as a salesperson at the booth.
    Another opportunity to place the products is making agreements with restaurants in Novo Brdo. CRD has already established one successful agreement with restaurant Gersheta in Draganc village.
The next activity of the group will be to advocate on a regional level to the Regional Agency for Economic Development and in national level to the Ministry of Trade and Industry for Novo Brdo to be included in the touristic guides of Kosovo’s attractions.
The initiative is supported by the Kosova Women’s Fund (KWF) and funded by Austrian Development Agency (ADA) with the amount of €2,740.
 
 

 

GRB Presented at Regional Workshops on Municipal Budgets

Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is increasingly becoming a buzz word at budget and finance related meetings, presentations, and conferences. This time, at the kind invitation of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) KWN Programme Manager and Lead Researcher Nicole Farnsworth presented on GRB at three different regional workshops on municipal budgeting processes, on the behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
   On 25, 26 and 28 August, MoF organized three regional workshops with local and central authorities on the development of municipal budgets for the period 2016-2018.The main goal of the workshops was to discuss and coordinate the priority objectives on the development of municipal budgets, including the coordination of activities with line-ministries. Minister of Finance, Avduallah Hoti, in his opening remarks stated the importance of budget transparency and fiscal austerity and Petrit Popova, director of municipal budgets at MoF, moderated the discussion, listened to the many difficulties that municipal authorities were having and gave answers and solutions to those issues. “Municipalities are currently struggling with budget cuts, especially in the economic category of Wages and Salaries”, added mr. Popova.
   Nicole Farnsworth had the chance to inform participants on GRB. As GRB became a legal obligation in 2015, Ms. Farnsworth informed participants on the new Law on Gender Equality and the Budget Circular 2016/02 which obliges both municipalities and ministries to institutionalize GRB. She further gave some examples of how GRB had been integrated previously, citing the prominent example of Kamenica. KWN hopes that all municipalities will soon integrate GRB elements into their budget processes and documents. 
The three workshops were supported by OSCE, whereas KWN work on GRB is supported by Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Zusammenarbet (GIZ) and Austrian Development Agency (ADA)

 

Dokufest and UN Women organize panel to discuss sexual violence during the war

 An important panel with the topic: “Support for survivors of sexual violence during the war” was organized in Prizren, within the scope of the documentary film festival “Dokufest”. This panel was moderated by the women’s rights activist and Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) Executive Director Igballe Rogova. Panellists included: Bakira Hasecic, executive Director of the Association of Women Victims of War, Flora Macula from UN Women, Veprore Shehu from Medica Kosova and Danish documentary filmmaker Katia Forbert Petersona where they discussed for sexual violence during the war in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
   Peterson is the co-director of the documentary film “Mission Rape: A Tool of War” which was screened at DokuFest and in which Hasecic tells her story during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
“I am only one of thousands of women raped during the aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Hasecic. “At that time my daughters were 16 and 19 years old. I would never have believed that my neighbour from the other ethnicity could do such evil to fellow citizens, just because you don’t belong to his ethnic group.” 
   The discussion covered the consequences for the survivors, society and the importance of justice and reparation. 
Veprore Shehu from Medica Kosova shared their experience on how difficult it is for them to offer services for survivors, as it was considered a taboo topic right after the war. 
Women’s rights organizations were the first who raised their voices for the recognition of the status of women survivors of sexual violence during the war. In 2012, KWN organized a protest with the motto:We don’t want flowers we want justice for women raped during the war”.  And in response to concerns and issues raised by women who had suffered sexual violence The President of Republic of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga established the National Council for Survivors of Sexual Violence during the War on Mar. 7, where KWN is a member.