Welcome to Pristina!
Ever since being selected to intern at the Center for Legal Aid and Regional Development (CLARD) in Pristina, Kosovo, I have been enthusiastically looking forward to my 1L summer. Shortly after finals, I took off on a very long flight to Zurich, followed by a long layover, and then a short flight to Pristina. I finally arrived in Pristina on Saturday night, and after spending Sunday adjusting to my new surroundings, I was ready to start my internship Monday morning.
On the first day of my internship, I met the CLARD team. We spoke a little bit about my interests in the law and what I should expect to experience in Kosovo. The moment I mentioned liking coffee, my supervisor, Anton, invited me to go with him and another coworker, Edona, to the cafe downstairs from CLARD's office. There, I had my first exposure to Kosovo's coffee culture as we continued to get acquainted. Anton explained to me that the main two cafe drinks in Kosovo are espressos and macchiatos. He also said that Kosovo's macchiatos are better than Italy's, and while I have never tasted an Italian macchiato to compare it to, I can say that the one I had was very good.
On my second day, I received my first assignment, which brought a lesson about Kosovo and its status in the international community along with it. Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, making it the second youngest country in the world. (The youngest country is South Sudan, which declared its independence in 2011.) Kosovo is not currently a member of the United Nations, nor is it a member of the European Union or the Council of Europe. Because of its status, Kosovo was unable to be a party to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention. However, in 2020, Kosovo took a different approach by amending its Constitution to state that it would apply the Istanbul Convention to its own laws despite not being an official party. With this background, my first project involves analyzing how effectively the Istanbul Convention is actually being implemented in Kosovo and what gaps still need to be filled to address domestic and gender-based violence in the country.
Beyond my own project, CLARD has been doing a lot of work recently focused on this issue. I had the opportunity to see some of it on Friday, when I joined my coworkers at a training they led at the Academy of Justice about the Istanbul Convention. I understood very little of it, as it was all in Albanian, but I did read some of the training materials that were in English, and I also managed to pick up a few new words here and there throughout the presentation. Hopefully, by the time the summer is over, I'll have a much more expansive Albanian vocabulary. I am looking forward to learning more next week as I continue my research and keep getting to know Kosovo.