Kosovo shocked by two femicides in less than a week

Kosovo's president on Tuesday declared a day of mourning and urged a clampdown on violence against women after hundreds joined a demonstration in the capital amidst outrage over two murders in five days.

Several hundred people marched in front of the justice ministry in the capital Pristina late Monday over the killing of a 21-year-old woman, calling for a tougher policy against gender-based violence. Prosecutors said she was shot dead by her husband in the town of Ferizaj last Friday.

The protesters carried banners saying that prosecutors, police, courts, and the state all have "blood on their hands".

The murder of a second woman in the western town of Peja was announced Tuesday and came as a new shock. It was "suspected that the husband took the life of his wife" in their apartment, prosecutors said in a statement.

"The President of the Republic of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, in support of the Constitution of Kosovo, has decided to declare Wednesday, April 17, 2024, a day of mourning, in memory of all women and girls killed in Kosovo as a result of violence on a gender basis", according to a statement from the presidency.

Speaking to reporters, Osmani said, "Unfortunately, today we all woke up this morning with the terrible news of the murder of a woman by her husband."

"The only way to stop it is if we all wake up as a society, as a state, and as a nation," Osmani added.

Since 2010, there have been 55 cases of femicide in the country of only 1.8 million people. Last year police registered more than 1,100 cases of gender-based violence, but human rights groups said there were many more.