Fatmire Feka

Activist Type

Children's Rights

Fatmire Feka is an Albanian peace activist based in Kosovo. As a child, Fatmire was directly impacted by the growing Serbian-inflicted violence against the nation’s population of Muslim Albanians during the Kosovo War. In the spring of 1999, Serbian troops began rounding up Muslim Albanians in Fatmire’s village for execution. Fatmire and her family fled into the woods as their house burned and gunshots rang out in the distance. Although the war ended later that year, Fatmire, just 11 years old, found herself living in a camp with other families displaced by the conflict. Inspired by the reconciliation projects at the camp run by World Vision, she became interested in peace-building.

At 12, with World Vision’s support, Feka founded Kids Club for Peace, which uses meetings, skits, and songs to unite youth from different ethnicities in Kosovo. Despite facing harsh criticism from her fellow Muslims, Fatmire persisted in her efforts. Eventually, Feka and her younger sisters emigrated to Toronto, Canada, but she continued her peace work for her homeland. She has expanded the Kids Club for Peace movement to 14 multi-ethnic clubs in English, Albanian, and Serbian to promote tolerance and understanding of ethnicity, race, and religion in conflict zones. Among her accolades, Fatmire has been selected as an Angel of Hope by World Vision Canada, and in 2015, she was named one of the “1000 Women of Peace Across the Globe,” a group collectively nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Artwork by

Veronyka Jelinek

The portrait of Fatmire Feka is inspired by her courage to forgive and her empathy towards others as the lines of the drawing are both sensitive and strong, with her looking resilient to the better future whilst vulnerable at the same time. She is surrounded by a flock of blackbirds—as Kosovo, the country’s name is derived from Serbian ‘Kosovo polje’ medieval battlefield grounds, translated as ‘blackbird’s field’. The naming is often a source of disputes between Serbians and Albanians, mirroring their many disagreements. However Feka is portrayed peaceful surrounded by the blackbirds, even when one of the birds seems to have pierced her chest by painful memories.