Kosovo Human Development Report 2010 - UNDP Kosovo - United ...

2. Disadvantaged children and
youth: the young have the least
economic and social power to
break out of exclusion; it damages
their life opportunities almost
beyond repair and creates generational
traps. Kosovo’s excluded
young people are members
of poor families or families with
a long-term unemployed wage
earner, part of Kosovo-RAE communities,
part of communities
without sufficient access to services,
environmental protection or
information, those living in remote
or rural areas and girls subjected to
restrictive cultural practices. Young
people are affected by economic
factor market exclusion, with 48
percent classed as poor compared
to a 45 percent Kosovo average.
Youth unemployment rates stand
at 73 percent, more than half as
much again as the Kosovo average
of 43 percent. Exclusion from
education is a particularly grave issue
for minority children trapped in
parallel systems, paying the price
for Kosovo’s history of exclusion,
as well as for girls in the context
of diminishing gender parity in
the classroom. Children of ethnic
minorities are particularly badly affected
by ostracization, lack of parental
prioritization and the inability
to attend school in a local language.
The absence of high quality
health information and adequate
maternal, child, adolescent and
reproductive health outreach for
disadvantaged young people creates
health and nutrition problems
for many. Smoking, poor hygiene
and unhealthy eating undermine
their development, with just under
one in seven stunted for their age
and approximately one in six weak-
ened by anaemia. Young people
are deeply conscious of their exclusion,
reflected in diminishing voting
patterns among young voters
and a decrease in political activism
despite a clear and still untainted
desire to make a contribution to
their society and work together
across ethnic and cultural divides.
3. Rural women: Kosovo’s de facto social
exclusion of women’s potential is a key
factor in its economic decline and
uncompetitive labour market. Labour
force participation for women
is 26.1 percent, compared to 65.8
percent for men and a European
average of 64 percent. Women
have higher unemployment rates
than men and few other income
sources, gravely limiting their access
to factor markets (only 6 percent
of business owners, for example,
are women). Rural women in
particular are most likely to be confined
to subsistence living as well as
being more likely to be illiterate and
less able to access the services and
information to which they are entitled.
Factors that exclude rural areas
in general from equal access to
quality services (such as distance
to services, poverty, cost of transport
etc) are felt particularly hard
by rural women and girls. These
women and girls carry the greatest
burden of work at home and are
often forbidden to expand their
horizons. Thus, women’s health
and nutrition is more likely to suffer
in rural areas, with low rates of
exclusive breastfeeding, high rates
of smoking, high rates of anaemia
(23 percent) and lower levels of
education. Exclusion of rural women
in this way not only holds back
the development of rural areas, but
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