Vetevendosje Women Target Sexual Harassment in Kosovo

Women members of Kosovo's main opposition Vetevendosje party have highlighted sexual harassment cases in their own working environment, in a bid to raise awareness of the wider phenomenon in the country.

"There has been harassment, this is not a general or acceptable culture, but it has happened secretly to a small number of people," Nazlie Bala, head of the Women Activists' Secretariat at Vetevendosje, told BIRN on Friday.

Her statement came after Albin Kurti, the party leader, told BIRN's TV show, Jeta ne Kosovo, on Thursday that his party needed a code of ethics to address sexual harassment.

"Vetevendosje offices have not had any immunity from unacceptable expressions and male chauvinist communications to women and girls, who they put in a kind of position of embarrassment in work places," Kurti said.

Kurti's statement made waves on social media, but Diellez Arifi, an activist of Vetevendosje, told BIRN that "it should be clarified that gender discrimination, inequality or harassment is not the same as [non-consenting] sex".

"All these reactions that came after the address [by Kurti] on this topic were equalizing them," she stated.

Bala said that harassment was often not direct and sometimes followed women's refusals or rejection. "We have learned about this harassment from the complaints of the girls directly involved," she explained.

Asked if any of these cases had been penalised, Bala stated that one person was dismissed from the party in 2013 after a complaint.

She said that sexual harassment remains a challenging issue, and it would take time and energy to create a space in which such cases were addressed and denounced.

"We started talking publicly about it in Vetevendosje, as we want to break...