Finding My Path: Transitional Justice, Kosovo, and PISU

Democracy & Governance Intern in Kosovo 

This blog was originally written by Pipa Pipa, Summer 2025 intern, and is shared here with permission from the author.

When I interned in Kosovo, I had the unique opportunity to take a summer class as an international student at the University of Prishtina (also called PISU and is a part of the Isla program), and it changed the course of my career.

I took the class "Introduction to Transitional Justice" and, at the time, I had no idea where it would lead me. If I'm being honest, before that class I had only a vague idea of what transitional justice even was. I pictured it as something simple: just the process of how people "moved on" after a war; how a society collectively decided to put the horrors of widespread violence behind them and keep going. I didn't yet understand that "moving on" isn't really the point at all, or that there's an entire framework, built from decades of knowledge, behind how societies actually rebuild after mass violence. That class showed me a much bigger and more complicated picture than the one I walked in with, and it ended up being a field I have fallen in love with.

What I learned in class is that Transitional Justice is made of four pillars. Truth-seeking is about uncovering and officially acknowledging what actually happened, because societies can't heal from a history that's been denied or hidden. Criminal prosecutions (justice) hold perpetrators accountable, showing that these violations were crimes, not just unfortunate casualties of conflict. Reparations attempt to repair, in whatever way possible, the harm done to victims and their families, whether through compensation, formal apologies, or memorials. And guarantees of non-repetition focuses on reforming the institutions and systems that allowed the violence to happen in the first place, so history doesn't repeat itself. Together, these four pillars form a framework that helps societies move from a period of violence and human rights violations toward peace and democracy; not by forgetting the past, but rather by confronting it head-on. Kosovo uses the framework of Transitional Justice to heal and rebuild from the ethnic cleansing that happened in the 1990s. 

The class was taught by two scholars in the field of human rights. Dr. Fabián Raimondo, an Associate Professor of Public International Law at Maastricht University, has served as counsel before the International Criminal Court and as an advocate in reparations proceedings for enforced disappearances in Argentina. Dr. Besfort Rrecaj, an Associate Professor of Public International Law at the University of Prishtina, brought a more local lens, having worked with Kosovo's Constitutional Court and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as international organizations like the OSCE. Between the two of them, every lecture weaved together international legal theory and the lived, on-the-ground realities of Kosovo, and I felt like I learned something new every single class.

In addition to lectures, we had the opportunity to visit organizations in Kosovo that were doing this important work on the ground. Through this program, we visited local NGOs and museums to learn more about the sexual violence that occurred during the war. I remember standing in a room that held the stories of survivors written on paper hung from the ceiling, and being completely overcome with emotion. I started crying, faced with the sheer weight of the hurt and horror these people had lived through.

We also visited an exhibit that documented the stories of children who were killed or went missing during the conflict. One of the most impactful stories for me was "Arber's Marbles." On March 28th, 1999, Arber and his family were forced out of their home and taken to a yard, where Serbian forces opened fire, leaving 14 people dead, including Arber. Displayed in a glass case at the exhibit are marbles that belonged to Arber; his father found the marbles scattered across the lawn months after he was killed. To this day, the bodies of Arber and his family members have never been found. He is survived by his father, who donated the marbles to the exhibit so that Arber's story would not be forgotten.

After coming back from Kosovo, I noticed something strange happening every time I talked to friends and family about my trip. No matter where the conversation started, I kept steering it back to the Isla activities and the PISU class: I couldn't stop bringing up transitional justice. It was during one of these conversations where I went on and on about Transitional Justice that a friend finally stopped me and asked, "So what do you want to do now?" And in that moment, it just hit me, this was the answer. I wanted to be part of rebuilding after violent conflicts. I wanted to teach other people about it too, the way my professors had taught me. This led me to apply to Denver University's Master's program in International Human Rights, which I started in the summer of 2026.

I owe so much to Isla and PISU. Without them, I never would have found Transitional Justice, or seen firsthand the healing it can bring to people who have lived through the unimaginable. It's an opportunity I will carry with me, and be grateful for, for the rest of my life.