The Chairperson of the Committee on Human Rights, Duda Balje, has stated that the law on training, professional retraining and employment of persons with disabilities is not being implemented. Despite the legislation, she adds, the main problems faced by this category of people have not been solved. Although the Constitution envisages inclusion in education, Balje claims that not all children with disabilities are attending school. However, she tells KosovaPress that they do not have accurate data on the number of children who go to school.

MP Duda Balje, who heads the Committee on Human Rights, claims that people with disabilities are living in poor conditions.

“We are still fighting for the administrative instruction for assessment, we have had many meetings with ‘Handikos’ and with people who are responsible for the situation of people with disabilities in Kosovo. With each of those we have spoken with, the first issue is the medical commission which is doing the Paraplegic and Tetraplegic assessment and the others, both within these and for the person who takes care of them. We also called the representative of the government, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Legal Office, who have the obligation to issue this regulation. We had a promise that it will happen very quickly, but in fact a lot of time has passed and we still haven’t received information whether they have finished with this administrative instruction or not”, said Balje.

People with disabilities, as Balje adds, are also facing difficulties in the streets and institutions.

“We have not found a solution for the top three problems that people with disabilities have today. Within this group, women are even more discriminated against, because they have even more specific needs, and all energy should be concentrated here. We have the law that each institution is obliged to employ a disabled person for every 50th employee. We are monitoring whether they have sufficiently respected this decision or not. We are not satisfied. In the Assembly, yes, we have the exact number of persons with disabilities who deserve to be workers within the Assembly. This should be done by each ministry, each institution, each state address, in order to help and motivate. Because they are really one of the most sensitive categories in Kosovo”, she said.

The Chairperson of the Committee on Human Rights says that the “black spot” for the country is also the interruption of education for persons with disabilities.

“It is a ‘black spot’. Because each of us, based on the Constitution, has the right to free education, and in fact the Constitution is the highest legal act in a country. Cooperation with the committee should be greater. That no matter how much we are observing it, we do not have information from the ground properly. We even have justification from the responsible persons, a kind of defense that we in the Assembly cannot oppose because we do not have information on the ground. No matter how many times we are in schools or visit institutions, it is not enough”, she said.

MP Duda Balje hopes that with the inclusion of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Constitution of Kosovo, the lives of the latter will improve.

“We have monitored the law in this part as well and we have worked hard on this administrative instruction together with them. Now we are waiting for the commission’s response. The International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has passed the committee, we have also passed it in the assembly, we have worked hard to make it part of the Constitution of Kosovo as the Istanbul Convention. But in the absence of votes inside the hall, we do not have enough votes because we need 2/3 of the votes of the communities. Here is the main reason why the Convention cannot be part of the Constitution. If we pass the Convention, all these things will be fixed very quickly and will be part of the Constitution, and no institution has the right to deviate something”, she said among other things.

Since 2009, Kosovo has adopted a special law, which obliges every public and private institution to employ one disabled person for every 50 workers.  

This article was produced by the Center for Innovations and Development in the framework of the project: – Strengthening the resilience of the elderly and people with disabilities during COVID-19 and future disasters”.

This project is co-funded by the European Union”