Experts say pregnant women in Kosovo are too often expected to suffer and accept the pain of childbirth – without complaining.
Xhorxhina Bami
A.H. gave birth three times in Kosovo’s University Clinical Centre, but the treatment she says she endured was no better the third time than the first.
Faced with having to undergo a cesarean section, A.H., who spoke on condition she was identified only by her initials, said it took the doctor five attempts to correctly insert a needle for the epidural.
“After four attempts, she started yelling at me that I wasn’t sitting properly,” she said. “Her colleagues could see she wasn’t behaving correctly and another approached to calm me down after her screams.”
At the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025, 1,171 Kosovar women gave accounts of obstetric violence to the feminist online platform Grazeta, alleging “neglect or minimisation of… pain”, “verbal abuse or disrespect” and being left alone for long periods during labour.
Yet the public prosecution service told BIRN they have not received any official complaints in the past three years. This means that widespread mistreatment of women in labour is going largely unreported, experts say.
