Seeking Justice for Wartime Sexual Violence in Kosovo: Voices and Silence of Women

Anna Di Lellio Program in International Relations, New York University, and The New School for Public Engagement

At different times, and for different reasons, Kosovo informal and organized women’s networks have dealt with wartime sexual violence in different ways: they have followed either a strategy of silence or one of speech. Throughout, they have struggled to disentangle gender from ethnicity, straddling the line between a deep connection with local culture and domestic and international norms and agendas. This article tells their story, which in broader terms is the story of the subjectivity of women’s rights activists—domestic and international—as it connects with the normative framework of transitional justice. The case of Kosovo shows that transitional justice meaningfully engages local actors as a human rights project sensitive to political change, more than as a “toolkit” which packages truth, reconciliation and justice with recipes for implementation. The case of Kosovo also confirms that lobbying by women’s networks is crucial to the inclusion of women’s perspectives in transitional justice, and that the exclusion of women from decision making results in a net loss for women’s concerns. I would take the argument even further, and suggest that the inclusion of women and their agendas, as well as the struggle by women’s networks for inclusion, is necessary for human rights transformation.