By all accounts, the work by the Kosovo police is an improvement but targets only the tip of the iceberg.
More insidious than the trafficking are the domestic abuse cases. Perhaps tens of thousands of women suffer violence at home or the denial of basic rights, according to human rights activists and social workers. Experts say the problem crosses ethnic lines -- Albanians, Serbs, Roma and others are victims -- and remains vastly underreported.
Igballe Rogova, head of the Kosova Women's Network, an umbrella coalition of about 40 groups, said she was hopeful the government, with the independence issue more or less settled, could put into practice laws that exist on paper.
"Today we have really incredibly good mechanisms on gender equality," she told a European Parliament committee on women's issues in Brussels late last month. "We have a law on gender equality, we have an office on gender equality at the prime minister level and, in every ministry, gender equality officers. We are not happy with the implementation of these mechanisms, but we are very optimistic."
Sherifa said laws grant women the rights to own and inherit property on the same terms as men. But it often does not happen that way.
In the case of Fatima, for example, her father owns nearly nine acres of land, which he has divided among her brothers. But he refuses to give Fatima any, forcing her to live with her husband and children in her father-in-law's tiny house. Seven people live, cramped and unhappily, in the two-room shack.
Both her husband and her father-in-law beat her, Fatima said. Her "offenses" ranged from asking for money to buy medicine for a sick child, or asking for food. Sometimes, she said, she goes days without eating. Fatima has ended up in the shelter three times in the last two years, each time after a beating so severe she could not stand the pain any longer.
Haven for abused
The shelter, run by Sherifa's organization, was the first one in Kosovo. It is a three-story house behind a gate on a quiet street of Pristina. Police patrol it regularly. (The Times was granted rare access to the shelter and its residents on the condition that neither the location nor the victims be identified. "Fatima" is a pseudonym.)
The good news in Fatima's story is that when, bruised and bloodied, she called the police, they came. They took her to the shelter. She returned to the family after the men were briefly detained by the police and ordered not to touch her again. Now, however, it is clear the intervention has failed, Sherifa said, and she will look for a permanent place for Fatima and her children to live.
More than anything, Fatima seems weary. "I just feel sorry for my children," she said. "They see all this violence all the time. I'm afraid it will affect them."
The bad news is the shelters are full, unable to meet the demand; abusers are rarely prosecuted, witnesses too terrified to come forward.
Said Sherifa: "This is something we, and the next generation, will have to work on."
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wilkinson@latimes.com
Wilkinson, The Times' Rome Bureau chief, was recently on assignment in Kosovo.
