Exchanging Perspectives, Plus Some Weekend Cave Trekking
This past week, Edona returned from her visit to the United States. She traveled with several other lawyers from Balkan countries to Washington, DC and Tucson, Arizona for a program organized by the U.S. State Department. When she returned, she shared all of her observations with the team at CLARD. I was very interested in hearing her perspective, especially because this was her first visit to the United States. She also brought back some souvenirs for everyone, including me.
During our discussion, the topic of gun regulations came up. Gun ownership is much more restricted in Kosovo than it is the United States, which was one of the differences Edona noticed. Since CLARD has been working on so many projects related to domestic violence, I mentioned that the Supreme Court just ruled on a case about gun restrictions and protective orders for domestic violence, U.S. v. Rahimi, and asked Edona if she had heard about it, since the holding came out while she was in the United States. She hadn't, but she was very interested in reading the case and asked me to send it to her. I found the opinion and sent it, which she appreciated. It felt good to be able to share something from U.S. law after learning so much from my coworkers about Kosovo law.
I also turned in my final report on the Istanbul Convention this week. After Anton read it, he told me that he thought I did a great job and had very few edits for me. Throughout the process of this project, Anton has emphasized that the most important thing for him is making sure that I fully understand all the details of the three documents (the Istanbul Convention, the National Strategy, and Law No. 08/L-185). He said that after looking at my report, he can tell that I understand everything really well. All of this felt amazing to hear considering how much time I spent on the report and how hard I worked on it. I also do genuinely feel like I've come to understand both the Istanbul Convention and the challenges of addressing domestic violence in Kosovo in much greater depth because of this project.
After I turned in my report, Anton spoke with me a bit more about my next project, which I am now starting to work on. My task is to assemble a list of all countries Kosovo has an extradition agreement with, as well as the details of each agreement. It is true that Kosovo's lack of recognition by some countries is a factor in extradition, but another factor is Kosovo's newness. For example, Anton told me about a case in 2010—only two years after Kosovo declared its independence—when the United States sought extradition of a terror suspect from Kosovo, but extradition was impossible because the United States had not signed an extradition agreement with the newly independent state of Kosovo yet. The United States and Kosovo have signed an extradition agreement since then, though, so when I make my list of countries, the United States will be on it.
My final note for this blog post comes from this weekend, during which Stephanie and I traveled to Peja. I visited Peja earlier this summer with CLARD, but we didn't do much sightseeing. This time, Stephanie and I had the opportunity to be tourists. The mountains behind Peja are called the Accursed Mountains, which is fascinating in and of itself. The highlight of the trip by far was seeing Radavci Cave, also known as the Sleeping Beauty Cave, a vast cave in the mountains full of stalactites and stalagmites, as well as some bats who occasionally flew over our heads before disappearing into the part of the cave sectioned off for archeologists to dig for artifacts. I'll close with a few photos of the incredible sights we saw inside the cave:
Thanks for following along this far! See you next week!