Vjosa Dobruna

Kosovo

One of only three women appointed to the 20-member United Nations Joint Interim Administrative Structure of war-ravaged Kosovo, Vjosa Dobruna served as head of the Department for Democratic Governance and Civil Society, monitoring and recommending regulations on human and minority rights, equal opportunities, good governance, and media. She advises organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Open Society Institute, the Network of East-West Women, and Hope Fellowships, a training program for a new generation of Kosovar leaders. She is vice president of the Board of Governors of RTK, Kosovo’s only public radio and television station. A pediatrician and human rights activist, Dr. Dobruna is founder of the Center for the Protection of Women and Children. Caught up in the flood of refugees during the 1999 “ethnic cleansing,” Dr. Dobruna created a similar center in Tetova, Macedonia, providing emergency care to traumatized women. At the Mother Teresa Humanitarian Association, she provided health care, advocated for women and children’s health rights, and taught courses on health education for women and child nutrition and development. In 2001, Dr. Dobruna was Kosovo’s gender focal point for the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe. In 2002 and 2003, she was 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 researched truth commissions, exploring models for Kosovo.

Dr. Dobruna’s peace-building activities include:

• advising regional and international organizations on restructuring post-communist, post-conflict Kosovar society;
• insisting on the full political participation of women and ethnic minority groups and helping draft an election regulation requiring that one in every three candidates for the new assembly be women—a regulation that was successfully passed;
• co-chairing a conference that brought together women in the Kosovar assembly for a multiparty caucus bridging ethnic and party lines—the only such cross-party body in Kosovo;
• participating in delegations of political leaders at conferences sponsored by the US Institute of Peace to design a stable governance structure for Kosovo; and
• collecting evidence from victims at sites of massacres and other atrocities, for which she was targeted by Serb special police.

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