Vjosa Dobruna
Kosovo

Vjosa Dobruna was one of only three women appointed to the UN Joint Interim Administrative Structure of Kosovo. She served as National Head of the Department for Democratic Governance and Civil Society, mandated to monitor and recommend laws on human and minority rights, equal opportunities, good governance, and media. A pediatric neurologist and human rights activist, she is a senior advisor to Hope Fellowships, a training program for a new generation of Kosovar leaders, and is Vice President of the Board of Governors of RTK, the only public radio and television station in Kosovo. Dr. Dobruna is also the founder of the Center for the Protection of Women and Children. Having collected evidence from victims at sites of massacres and other atrocities, she was targeted by Serb special police. Subsequently caught up in the flood of refugees during the 1999 "ethnic cleansing," Dr. Dobruna created a similar center in Tetova, Macedonia, that provided emergency shelter and care to traumatized women. She has also worked at the Mother Teresa Humanitarian Association, providing health care and advocating for women and children's health rights, and has taught courses on health education for women, as well as child nutrition and development. She is also the founder of a safe house for battered women. Dr. Dobruna is now a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Women and Public Policy Program, at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she is researching truth commissions and exploring a possible model for Kosovo.

Dr. Dobruna's peace-building activities include:

• advising regional and international organizations on the restructuring of a post-communist Kosovar society;
• serving as one of only three women appointed to the UN's Joint Interim Administrative Structure of Kosovo, as the minister responsible for democracy building and civil society;
• insisting on the full political participation of women and ethnic minority groups and helping draft an election law requiring that one in every three candidates for the new national assembly be women-that law was successfully passed;
• co-chairing a conference that brought together the women in the Kosovar Parliament for the creation of a multiparty caucus bridging ethnic and party lines-the only such cross-party body in Kosovo; and
• participating in delegations of political leaders at conferences sponsored by the US Institute of Peace to design a stable governing structure for Kosovo.
  

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