Another petition opposing some of the contents of Kosovo’s Draft Civil Code claims that the new Code perpetuates women’s financial oppression with its provisions on division of property in marriage.
The petition launched by Kosovo NGO INJECT (Initiative for Justice and Equality) has gathered more than 800 signatures.
Kosovo’s new Civil Code would allow for premarital and marital contracts for the predetermined division of property between spouses. INJECT argues that this constitutes a setback for women’s rights in Kosovo, whose employment rate is only 13.7%.
Seeing as Kosovo’s women have such low employment rates, combined with socio-cultural pressure to marry, have children and submit to their husbands’ will, the possibility of a division of property contract drafted during the marriage leaves women especially vulnerable to financial abuse and coercion from their husbands.
The Draft Civil Code, INJECT claims, has failed to include the positive changes made to Kosovo’s family law in 2019, that considered “both spouses as equal participants in the creation of joint property in a manner that also recognizes unpaid work of women within marriage, such as care for children, the family property management, etc.”
The failure to include these changes, alongside the inclusion of premarital and marital contracts in the Draft Civil Code, risks making women especially vulnerable in and after marriage, INJECT says.
Additionally, the Draft Civil Code states that “spouses contribute to the wellbeing of the family according to their own individual abilities. The spouses’ joint contribution is defined as the management of the household economy, as well as the other income necessary for family life and it is assumed that they are equal participants in their contributions to the family’s expenses.” This definition allows space for parties to claim that, “according to individual abilities,” spouses cannot lay equal claim to the joint assets, as they are considered as equal contributors to the family’s expenses, but not the family’s income.
By abandoning the principle of an equal division of property that was included in the 2019 version of Kosovo’s Family Law, the Draft Civil Code differentiates between the labor of the spouses “according to individual abilities”. In practice, this would lead to the devaluation of women’s domestic labor, that will not be considered as sufficiently valuable to merit a 50-50 division of property between the spouses.
INJECT warns that barring women from equal access to joint property and alimony has often led to violence against women, at times fatal, since the latter have been financially unable to leave abusive marriages.
Thus, the petition called on the Speaker of the Parliament, and the MPs, to refuse voting on the Civil Code in its current iteration.
Kosovo’s LGBT organizations have also found fault with the Draft Civil Code, that currently defines marriage as a union between “two spouses of different sexes,” and would only allow the possible regulation of same-sex unions via a special law. However, NGOs claim that precedent shows that issues relegated to a special law “have actually never been regulated in Kosovo.”
