CNN International World News

Kosovo Society Reluctant To Accept Children Of Rape

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MICHAEL HOLMES, WORLD NEWS: The war in Kosovo ended nearly a year ago, but many people still are suffering. One delayed effect is children now being born to ethnic Albanian women who were raped by Serb soldiers - children born into a society reluctant to accept them.

CNN's Rulitza Vasilova (ph) reports.

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RULITZA VASILOVA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Kosovo, where mass graves and crumbled houses tell the tale of war in the province, Prizren Hospital is home to a new kind of casualty. Her name is Arta (ph), and she is 3 months old. Though she is beautiful and healthy, she is unwanted.

Arta is the child of a 17-year-old ethnic Albanian woman allegedly raped by a Serb soldier. In ethnic Albanian culture, rape carries a stigma so strong that a child known to result from it becomes an immediate outcast. Arta's grandfather, unwilling to house a child he believes was conceived by rape, took the infant from her mother's bed shortly after she was born.

Arta is now up for adoption at this hospital 55 miles south of the capital Prizren. Dr. Fellanza Gjergjizi does not foresee a family for Arta any time soon - at least not in Kosovo.

DR. FELLANZA GJERGJIZI, PRIZREN HOSPITAL (through translator): I think that Arta, because it is known that she is a child of a mother who was raped, will have a very difficult time being accepted in our society. It is too hard to be adopted by someone here. She should be adopted by someone from another country.

VASILOVA: Compounding Arta's problems, the fact that her mother was allegedly raped by a Serb soldier. Animosity between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo erupted into war one year ago.

But it is only now, as the province struggles to rebuild, that the plight of abandoned children is surfacing. Dr. Gjergjizi says that before the war, she would see perhaps one abandoned child in an entire year. Since the war's end last June, she has seen nine cases of abandonment.

And the problem is not confined to Prizren. According to the humanitarian group Save The Children, at one point after the war, the main hospital in Pristina held 24 abandoned children. Now there are nine.

For most of these abandoned children, details of their conception are not known. They are the lucky ones. They do not carry the stigma and have a better chance at adoption in Kosovo. But for those like Arta, the best hope may be to find a home far away from their birthplace.

Rulitza Vasilova, CNN.

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