NOTEBOOK – Donika Shahini Lami

Donika Shahini Lami, a journalist, found this notebook with children's drawings when she went to Adem Jashari's house in Prekaz with the Japanese public television (NHK) after the Serbian police, between March 5-7, had carried out the murder of 59 members of the Jashari family, most of whom were women and children.

Particularly children were affected by the war in Kosovo. Often they lived for months as refugees in the mountains from the beginning of 1998. The lives of almost all Albanian children worsened especially after being expelled from official schools and due to economic insecurity when their Albanian parents were massively expelled from work in the public sector in the early '90s.

Many children were forced to enter the informal economy, as cigarette sellers, to help cover expenses.

This notebook of one of the Jashari children is testimony to a shortened childhood.