Social Inclusion and Child Rights Monitoring
Every child has the right to be protected from violence and exploitation, to live in a safe and clean environment and have a fair chance in life.
Social Inclusion and Child Rights Monitoring
UNICEF in Kosovo supports efforts to address inequities, child poverty and the protection of children most at risk of violence and abuse. UNICEF supports institutions to generate quality data on children, monitor progress on child rights at the central and local levels and strengthen social protection and child protection systems so all children have a more equitable chance in life.
Child Protection
UNICEF in Kosovo ensures that central and local child protection systems are robust and integrated and can offer both preventative and responsive services to address abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children.
Challenges
Many children in Kosovo are deprived of access to a safe home environment, essential services and equal opportunities to reach their full potential. While UNICEF has worked to address many of these issues, violence against children, a lack of infrastructure to support children with disabilities, a developing alternative care system for children unable to live with their parents and a fledgling juvenile justice system continue to cause growing pains.
While institutions in Kosovo have worked to address violence against children through legislation and policy, violent discipline and other forms of abuse continue to be socially accepted, despite the known long-term developmental impacts on children and the wider society. Cases of violence against children in Kosovo often go unreported, and over 60 per cent of children (70 per cent of Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian children) aged 1–14 were reported to have experienced physical punishment or psychological aggression. Weak institutional responses to violence against children persist, including a lack of appropriate services to prevent, protect or reintegrate victims and witnesses of violence. There is also a lack of systematic child-sensitive training for professionals who respond to these situations, including police officers, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and social workers.
The number of children with disabilities in Kosovo is unknown, but their situation remains very concerning. According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted by the Kosovo Agency of Statistics in partnership with UNICEF in 2020, 8 per cent of children aged 2–17 years were reported to have a functional difficulty in at least one domain. Disabilities and functional difficulties are most often identified after a child begins school and many of these students lack individualized plans to address their impairments. Coordinated services and legislation have remained inadequate due to limited professional understanding about disabilities and strained human and financial resources. Despite anti-discrimination laws, children with disabilities suffer from stigmatization and are at higher risk of being abused or neglected. High poverty levels further exacerbate the challenges these children face.
Ensuring a wide range of safe alternative care options is critical for an effective child protection system. Alternative care services, such as kinship care, foster care and guardianship, continue to develop in Kosovo. Yet, many challenges in the alternative care system need to be addressed before it can reach its full potential. Currently, 51 children are in foster care, 20 per cent of whom have disabilities, and 550 children are under kinship care. There continues to be a shortage of professional foster care families—just 17 out of 38 Kosovo’s municipalities have licensed foster families. Progress has been made in providing care for abandoned babies, but foster care has failed to be implemented in practice for children who have been abused, trafficked, or exposed to violence. Unlike many of its neighbours, Kosovo does not house children in institutions. However, some children continue to reside in residential houses. Once a child ages out of alternative care, few programmes exist to ensure their successful transition into adulthood. Even children with disabilities or without parental care do not receive any kind of financial support from the state or special social services to support their independent living. Legislative action, policy development, capacity development for frontline workers and new support services are crucial to improving the situation of these children.
Kosovo has worked to develop a solid juvenile justice system to serve better children aged 14–18 in conflict with the law. Laws, procedures, institutions and required capacities are mainly in place, and pre-trial detention is used only as a last resort. It remains challenging for children under criminal responsibility to access specialized services such as counselling, delinquency prevention programmes, education, vocational and life skills programmes and rehabilitation programmes for juvenile offenders. Other challenges include the limited capacity and lack of coordination between correction and probation services and the Centres for Social Work, which hinders effective social reintegration and prevention of recidivism.
Solutions
UNICEF in Kosovo works with partners to model and scale up promising solutions and interventions to protect children. We support the development of communication strategies and mobilize communities and service providers to change social norms and prevent violence against children. We offer technical assistance and expert advice to local and central institutions to develop a robust and well-coordinated child protection system.
UNICEF in Kosovo supports the development of critical secondary legislation to implement the Law on Child Protection.
We continue to support local and central institutions to establish effective child protection coordination and monitoring mechanisms to ensure better implementation, monitoring, and provisions of integrated child protection services.
UNICEF in Kosovo works with local authorities and relevant institutions to advocate for adequate financial and human resources to implement child protection programmes and policies. We support the development of pre-service and in-service training for social workers and other frontline service providers to improve child protection case management, including for high-risk cases and children with disabilities. We support the Centres for Social Work and other related stakeholders in municipalities across Kosovo to ensure that community-based rehabilitation models for children with disabilities, based on a bio-psycho-social approach, are functional and implemented. We are also supporting the review of “the draft law on evaluation, status recognition, benefits and services for persons with disabilities” to help ensure it adheres to regional and global standards and best practices for services for children with disabilities.
Our technical assistance also improves workforce capacities to deliver psychosocial services for children during and post COVID-19. Coordination with relevant ministries and partners will bolster the number and support of foster care families, improve specialized family-based alternative care services, and develop the capacity to monitor alternative care services.
Finally, UNICEF advises the Kosovo institutions on the implementation of juvenile justice programmes to better address prevention, alternatives to detention, improved vocational and life skills training and the reintegration of youth in contact with the law into their communities.
Social Policy
UNICEF in Kosovo works to build the capacity of central and local institutions to legislate, plan and invest in social protection policies, programmes and services targeting the poorest and most marginalized children and families.
Challenges
Significant shortcomings continue to limit the effectiveness of programmes meant to reduce poverty and provide social services to the most vulnerable children and families in Kosovo. Inequitable access to health, education and protection services, inadequate cash benefits and restrictive eligibility criteria for families disproportionally impact Kosovo's poorest and most marginalized groups.
Social services, which have been decentralized and are now administered at the municipal level, are mostly underfunded, are of low quality and are poorly integrated with other sectors.
Central budgets, allocated funds for social protection and salaries and training for the social welfare workforce are also inadequate and fall below regional levels.
Solutions
UNICEF in Kosovo conducts research and promotes evidence-based policies and interventions to strengthen systems so more children can benefit from integrated social and child protection services.
We provide technical support to enhance legal and policy frameworks and ensure that social policies are sensitive and responsive to the needs of children.
UNICEF in Kosovo also works to translate policies into results on the ground by developing and piloting models that demonstrate the effectiveness of integrated, quality child protection services. We do this by providing technical support for planning, budgeting of child-related programs Kosovo-wide, combined with direct support for programme implementation in targeted municipalities to ensure the most marginalized children receive necessary services.
Child Rights Monitoring
Challenges
Kosovo continues to struggle to generate high-quality data about the situation of children.
This lack of standardized and disaggregated child-related data makes it difficult for local and central institutions to conduct evidence-based planning and systematic monitoring. A lack of data also hinders the ability to analyze and evaluate the results of implemented policies and strategies. Other challenges that impact the ability to conduct accurate child rights monitoring in Kosovo include limited focus on child-related sustainable development goals (SDGs), poor coordination between Kosovo institutions, academia and civil society, and the absence of a central repository for child rights monitoring. Improved child rights monitoring based on accurate and disaggregated data would shine a light on the reality of Kosovo’s most vulnerable children and their families and communities and enable better planning and response to the economic and social impacts of various situations, such as the COVID-19 crisis.
Solutions
UNICEF works to ensure that child rights are at the forefront of the agenda in Kosovo.
This includes building the capacity of Kosovo institutions to generate and analyze data related to children.
We do this by providing technical support to enhance key data management information systems and building institutional capacity to undertake large-scale data collection on issues affecting children. The UNICEF-supported Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), conducted every five years, provide important information about the health and development of Kosovo’s families and children, including with disaggregated information regarding Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities. Such data is key for monitoring development progress.
UNICEF in Kosovo works to mainstream child-relevant SDG indicators into policy and legislation through the support to development of the National Development Strategy and other policies that are aligned with the SDGs. We support the effective implementation of child-related programmes by providing technical assistance for evaluation, documentation of best practice, and knowledge exchange.
Resources
These resources on social protection and inclusion represent just a small selection of materials produced by UNICEF and its partners in Kosovo.