7/05/2026
KCSS has recently published the report titled “The Rise of Anti-Gender Narratives in Kosovo: Far-Right Ideologies, Digital Violence, and Threats to Women’s Rights”. Among the core issues it addresses is the severity of digital violence against women. The report notes that, despite the growing scale of digital violence targeting women, Kosovo’s institutional response remains inadequate. The goal of this KCSS report has been to identify the key enabling factors behind this phenomenon and to propose concrete actions to address it. While the report covers both, this Op-Ed focuses on the latter, outlining the steps Kosovo institutions should undertake, including the legislative changes required, the need to strengthen institutional capacities, the enhancement of inter-institutional cooperation and coordination, and awareness-raising.
KCSS has recently published the report titled “The Rise of Anti-Gender Narratives in Kosovo: Far-Right Ideologies, Digital Violence, and Threats to Women’s Rights”. Among the core issues it addresses is the severity of digital violence against women. The report notes that, despite the growing scale of digital violence targeting women, Kosovo’s institutional response remains inadequate. A stark example is the AlbKings Telegram group case, which remains fresh in public memory. Not only is the case notorious, but it also exposed major systemic weaknesses in Kosovo’s judicial system in addressing this phenomenon.
The AlbKings Telegram group, which at its peak reached more than 112,000 members, enabled perpetrators to circulate intimate photos and videos, deepfake material, and personal data of women and girls without consent. Still, while media reporting led to the indictment of a few perpetrators, the sanctions for those indicted were strikingly light. They avoided imprisonment by reaching plea deals with the court, resulting in fines ranging between 2,000 and 2,500 euros, despite the severity of the case. This drew sharp criticism from civil society organizations and the media, which called the plea deals plainly inadequate. It also exposed key weaknesses in Kosovo’s justice and rule-of-law system in responding to the growing phenomenon of digital violence targeting women.
The report identifies several systemic shortcomings that also enabled perpetrators in the AlbKings case to avoid prison. Most notably, there are gaps in the legal framework: it does not clearly define and criminalise online gender-based violence, and there is no consistent system to record and track cases. The Kosovo Criminal Code addresses gender-based violence in generic terms, but lacks specific provisions that punish digital violence, leaving a wide range of technology-facilitated gender-based abuse effectively unpunishable. The Law on Prevention and Protection from Domestic Violence, on the other hand, recognises internet sexual harassment, yet it stops short of treating it as a punishable offence and provides no meaningful penalties for most forms of online abuse. Meanwhile, the Law on Cyber Security focuses mainly on classic offences such as unauthorised access to information systems, while failing to encompass newer and more complex forms of digital abuse, including doxing, cyber harassment, and non-consensual image-based abuse. As a result, prosecutors tend to rely on general provisions related to threats or harassment, which rarely capture how digital abuse blends into offline intimidation or the gendered dynamics that shape how these attacks occur and how they are experienced.
Given the severity of the situation, the goal of this KCSS report has been to identify the key enabling factors behind this phenomenon and to propose concrete actions to address it. While the report covers both, this Op-Ed focuses on the latter, outlining the steps Kosovo institutions should undertake, including the legislative changes required, the need to strengthen institutional capacities, the enhancement of inter-institutional cooperation and coordination, and awareness-raising.
Addressing the Legislative gaps
Taking into consideration the growing trend of gender-based digital violence, legal changes to fill the existing legal gap regarding these phenomena are crucially needed. This should be done by following current best practices and, in particular, by transposing the recently adopted “EU Directive on Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence” (2024) into Kosovo legislation. KCSS finds that the Directive proposes exactly what Kosovo’s legislation is missing: criminal offences for gender-based cyber violence, services that support victims, and institutions that respond coherently instead of sending cases from one desk to another. This necessarily means revising the Criminal Code by adding cyberstalking, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, deepfakes used for abuse, digital threats, and sexist defamation as criminal offences, and envisaging severe punishments for perpetrators of such acts. Additionally, the Law on Prevention and Protection from Domestic Violence needs to be updated as well, providing clearer definitions regarding online and hybrid abuse. This alignment with the EU Directive is essential to equip the police, prosecutors, and courts with a clearer basis to act.
Strengthening Institutional Capacity
While gender-based violence is a longstanding problem that remains widespread, its expression through digital channels is relatively new and still poorly understood. Strengthening the capacity of the institutions responsible for responding to it is therefore essential. Police, prosecutors, and judges urgently need practical, mandatory training on technology-facilitated gender-based violence, how it unfolds, how to secure digital evidence, and how to work with victims in ways that do not re-traumatise them. Clear investigation routines and victim-support pathways matter as much as the legal text itself.
Specialized capacity inside cybercrime units and prosecutorial offices is also essential, particularly given the speed at which content spreads and the cross-border nature of many networks. Dedicated teams with up-to-date tools and clear mandates would shorten response times, improve evidence handling, and increase the likelihood of meaningful outcomes for victims.
Finally, institutions need to work to enhance it cooperation and coordination. Agreed protocols for referrals, deadlines, and communication between police, prosecutors, courts, and support services would help prevent cases from stalling or being treated as low priority.
Fostering Interinstitutional Coordination and Platform Cooperation
Addressing technology-facilitated violence against women and girls in Kosovo requires far stronger coordination across institutions and sectors. Digital abuse spreads rapidly across platforms and can escalate into offline harm, yet responses remain fragmented. Cases like AlbKings showed how gaps in legislation, evidence collection, victim support, and prosecution enable impunity and leave survivors to navigate police, prosecution, courts, and service providers without clear pathways.
Therefore, a coordinated approach which links cybercrime units, prosecutors, courts, the Ombudsperson, social services, and women’s rights organizations through shared protocols, timely information exchange, and consistent case tracking should be developed. Additionally, clear referral routes, defined roles, and deadlines should be envisaged to reduce delays, prevent cases from being bounced between institutions, and ensure that protection and support are available from first report through final decision.
Cooperation with social media and messaging platforms is equally essential: improving reporting channels, preserving digital evidence quickly, and enabling swift takedown of abusive content. Without joint action and accountability, anti-gender networks will continue to normalize misogyny, intimidate targets, and deter women’s participation in public life.
Enhancing preventive means through Awareness-Raising and Education
Prevention has to be part of the response. General awareness-raising and education are essential tools to counter these threats posed by technology-facilitated violence against women and girls. This is particularly important, taking into consideration that the digital abuse in Kosovo continues to bel minimized, normalized, or misunderstood.
The report shows how anti-gender actors exploit online spaces to mainstream misogyny and intimidate women through coordinated harassment, doxing, deepfakes, and non-consensual image sharing. It also explains how quickly this abuse can scale, causing serious psychological, social, and economic. In some cases, it pushes women to withdraw from school, work, or public engagement. Education is therefore critical tool to help the public recognize that online hate and gendered harassments not harmless “actions”, but drivers of real-world insecurity.
Therefore, it is important to educate the general public on what constitutes hate speech and gender-based violence, reducing the tendency to dismiss abuse as “free expression” or a private dispute. Integrating digital safety, media literacy, and reporting guidance into schools, workplaces, and community programmes can reduce stigma, increase reporting, and strengthen bystander responsibility. Media and civil society can provide a crucial role in transmitting these educational messages. However these efforts should be embedded on the institutional curricula too, ensuring that actions to eradicate this threatening phenomena are systematic.
Conclusion
Digital violence against women is already present in Kosovo and the risk of it becoming normalised should concern anyone who cares about equality, safety, and democratic participation. Kosovo continues to lack adequate legislation to address this phenomenon, alongside limited institutional capacity, weak coordination, and low public awareness of its severity.
To change this trajectory, robust action is urgently required. Most importantly, Kosovo should amend its legal framework to explicitly criminalise technology-facilitated gender-based violence, fully aligned with the EU Directive. At the same time, institutions must strengthen their capacity to investigate and prosecute these offences, improve interinstitutional cooperation and case coordination, and invest in prevention through education and public awareness. These steps are not optional. Until they are implemented, civil society and the media should continue to press institutions for accountability and sustained reform.
This Op-Ed is written by Mentor Vrajolli, Executive Director of the KCSS, and draws upon key findings from the KCSS Report “The Rise of Anti-Gender Narratives in Kosovo: Far-Right Ideologies, Digital Violence, and Threats to Women’s Rights,” co-authored by researchers Adelina Hasani and Jon Limaj.
This publication was funded by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or BIRN.
