A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Kosova Women’s Network Declares War on Breast Cancer, March 8, 2007

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AdvocacyNet
News Bulletin 92, March 8, 2007
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Prishtina: The Kosova Women’s Network (KWN) and the Kosovo Center for Fighting Breast Cancer JETA/VITA (KCFBC) have launched a national campaign to prevent, detect and treat breast cancer in the province.

The campaign is being launched today – International Women’s Day – with a petition in Prishtina and letters to the prime minister and minister of health. The petition calls for a national strategy on breast cancer, and the speedy construction of an oncology institute, with trained personnel that can screen women and detect early signs of the disease.

A press release from KWN says that Kosovo lacks “exact data” but that studies elsewhere in the region suggest that one in every nine or 10 women may suffer.

“While the occurrence of breast cancer has increased in Kosovo, the conditions for prevention, early detection, and treatment are extremely limited,” says the release. “Breast cancer is the most common random cause of mortality among women” in the province.

The two organizations will follow up with televised debates and roundtables throughout March, as well as public service announcements on television.

KWN is a multi-ethnic network of 67 women’s organizations that advocate for women’s rights. Among other decisions, the 96 delegates to KWN’s third annual meeting, on December last year, decided to establish a working group on the trafficking of women and girls, which has increased since the end of the war in 1999.

KWN is also at the forefront of those seeking to confront nationalism in Kosovo, and build a peaceful future with Serbia. In March last year, KWN and The Women in Black Network (Serbia) launched the Women’s Peace Coalition to monitor the joint Serbia-Kosovo negotiations on Kosovo's future status from the perspective of women and to reject the “divisions of ethnicity and religion, as well as state borders and barriers.”

• For more information, email Alba Loxha at or visit KWN’s website.