War crimes with the focus on sexual violence

From 01-02 June 2016, Kosovo Judicial Institute in cooperation with EULEX and UNWOMEN has organised training session II on the topic “War crimes with the focus on sexual violence”.

The training was organized with the intention to further advance the knowledge and professional preparation of judges and prosecutors and other professionals about elements and issues that deal with crimes of sexual violence and successful criminal prosecution based on actual circumstances in Kosovo.       

In the framework of this training session there were elaborated the applicable law in Kosovo including international criminal legislation, common and specific elements of rape as a war crime, ways of gathering facts, modalities of access to information and the complexity of the process in reaching the accused person, perpetrators of sexual violence crimes in Kosovo during the armed conflict. The training was mainly focused on group exercises, on which occasion the participants, being divided into groups, were involved in preparation of the cases related to the identification of specific elements, category of crimes, form of responsibility and interconnection of these elements.

The beneficiaries of this training were judges of basic level,  prosecutors of basic and special level and police investigators from the Department of War Crimes at the Kosovo Police.