More than 1,100 women in Kosovo described experiencing verbal abuse, neglect, and disregard for their pain during childbirth, according to accounts gathered by feminist platform Grazeta at the end of 2024 and early 2025. Despite the scale of reported mistreatment — which includes staff shouting at patients and leaving them unattended during labour — the country's public prosecution service says it has received no formal complaints over the past three years. Experts warn that obstetric violence (the mistreatment of women by healthcare workers during childbirth) is going largely unreported in Kosovo, a small republic in the western Balkans that declared independence from Serbia in 2008.