Viktoria Pashtriku
Women’s Association Medica Gjakova
Gjakova, Kosovo
Welcome! My name is Viktoria Pashtriku and I am a graduate student at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where I am studying the collective memories of post-conflict regions, the role of women in the transitional justice process, and human rights. I am particularly interested in exploring the ways in which international administrations, local organizations, and culture/society address wartime sexual violence in post-war Kosovo.
This summer I will be interning at Medica Gjakova, a local women’s organization that provides survivors of wartime sexual violence with psychological and health resources and legal and economic assistance. In addition, they participate in lobbying and advocacy work to address societal stigmas associated with survivors and advocate for policies for women’s issues. The location of Gjakova is particularly valuable, as it was one of the hardest hit regions of Kosovo during the Kosovo War (1998-99), with some of the highest cases of wartime sexual violence and missing persons reported.
While at Medica Gjakova, I hope to utilize my background experience working at nonprofit organizations–including several women’s rights organizations–in communications, development, and event planning to contribute to advocacy and policy work. Some of these tasks may include the organizing of educational workshops and seminars, engaging Kosovo’s public through the “Be My Voice” campaign, which encourages people to openly discuss sexual violence, and contributing to the monitoring of public institutions for the way they tackle women’s human rights issues.
Through this human rights project, I hope to learn how local women’s groups are able to support and provide assistance for survivors of wartime sexual violence when international and local governance fails. I hope to discover some of the biggest challenges they face in their mission and how they solve them. And finally, I am very interested in observing how successful Kosovo’s pension plan for survivors of wartime sexual violence has been in its applicability and capacity to help survivors since its installation in January 2018.