We wish you a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2018!
Author: Milutin
Executive Director, Drug Policy Network Youth East Europe
Consultative meetings to build the Action Plan for Youth
In accordance with the principles of youth policy and the current practice in the preparation of regulations and public policies, the Ministry of Youth and Sports invited everyone interested, and especially young people, representatives of youth and for youth organisations, as well as local youth offices, to become involved in the process of drafting future three-year Action Plan for the implementation of the National Youth Strategy. Consultative meetings provided an opportunity to jointly review the results achieved by the Strategy so far, and to define a priority proposal for the period until 2020. Through a series of 5 meetings, aim was to together with young people and those who represent their interests, define the proposals of activities, measures and indicators for the next Action Plan.
Consultative meetings were organized by following themes:
- Employability and employment of young people,
- Development of competences and active participation of young people in society,
- Health, well-being and safety of youth,
- Information, Culture and Youth Mobility and
- Social inclusion of youth from categories at risk of social exclusion.
DPNSEE representatives participated in the meetings on Health, well/being and safety and also Social inclusion, two the most relalevant areas to our mission. Our member organisastions Prevent and Re Generacija participated in various conslutations too.
Each consultation was organised in two sections. First was evaluation of the work done over three specific objectives, using the indicators of results to be achieved by the Action Plan 2015 to 2017. The second part of the meeting was focused on the discussion of measures and possible new indicators and expected results related to the specific goals of the Youth Action Plan in the period from 2018 to 2020. The conclusions of the meeting can be seen as the guidelines that are showing which points of the Action Plan are considered as the most important in this next phase. However, sharp criticism regarding indicators of the previous action plan points out that they should be more carefully set up.
Building a new HIV Strategy in Serbia
Recent National HIV in Serbia expired in 2015 and since then there were no initiatives to design a new one. Finally, this autumn, with revival of the activities around potential Global Fund project support, the Ministry of Health started a process of building a new HIV Strategy.
The process is quite fast – it started in early November with the deadline for the draft set at the end of 2017. A working group of five people was appointed, including one representative of the civil society. Each of the working group members was leading the process of producing the text in one of the priority areas: 1) Prevention, 2) Medical treatment and support to people living with HIV, 3) Stigma and discrimination, 4) Quality standards and 5) Strategic information.
In each of the subgroups, a dialogue between various stakeholders, governmental, civil society, academia and people living with HIV, was productive in analysing the situation and proposing new aims, measures and activities. DPNSEE and member organisations representatives participated actively in this endeavour. And success was achieved: the final meeting of the expert group, held on 25 December 2017, resulted in producing the final draft of the Strategy and the Action plan 2018 – 2021 for implementing it!
Even though the process short and the task challenging, we hope that the result will lay ground for a comprehensive and effective respond to HIV in Serbia.
Regional training on budget advocacy and monitoring
Why is it necessary to advocate for adequate funding of drug use harm reduction programs?
Which changes do we expect to achieve by advocating for adequate funding?
The regional training on budget advocacy and monitoring, held from 21 to 23 December 2017 in the hotel Romantik in Veles, Macedonia, tried to provide answers to these and many other questions. The training was organized by HOPS – Healthy Options, Skopje, with the support of the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia and conducted by experts from The Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women – ESE from Skopje.
The participants of the training gained knowledge that will help in their efforts to obtain financial resources from the state authorities, and covered topics that point out the problems that the organizations are experiencing due to insufficient funds, as well as the activities that the organizations can take to solve them. In addition, the process of budget analysis as a basis for advocating for creation of an effective budget as well as the procedures that are important in the process of monitoring and analysis of budgets were analysed.
11 participants come from six harm reduction civil society organisations from the region who are faced with a lack of funding for their programs after the departure of the Global Fund: Prevent and DPNEE from Serbia, Margina and PROI from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Juventas and Cazas from Montenegro (all members of DPNSEE), and two came from local organisation Becej Youth Association from Bečej, Serbia and Group for Public Policies from Belgrade.
HIV and TB Prevention in Sofia and Bulgaria
“HIV and TB Prevention in Sofia and Bulgaria – Assessment of the Situation” is a report that was created under the project “Fast-track TB/HIV responses for key populations in EECA cities”. It is a regional project funded by the Global Fund, which unites the efforts of five EECA cities (Almaty, Beltsi, Odesa, Sofia and Tbilisi) to achieve sustainable city-level policies for prevention of HIV and TB. The project is coordinated by the Ukraine Alliance for Public Health. In Sofia, Bulgaria, the local coordinators are Initiative for Heath Foundation and Association “Health without Borders”.
The main objective of the report is to bring together all the available information regarding the prevention of HIV and TB in Sofia and Bulgaria and to provide it to the decision makers. The report should be used as a base for the development of a Sofia city strategy on HIV and TB, which has not been developed so far.
The evaluation was conducted in the period July – September 2017 through: analysis of data provided by the Ministry of Health and experts of the Sofia Municipality and the National Centre for Addictions; analysis of documents and previous reports; qualitative methods (interviews and focus groups with vulnerable communities and professionals); mapping of services. The results outline the gaps in service provision related to the withdrawal of the Global Fund and confirm the need of an adequate national and city responses. The book is an author’s interpretation of the data gathered through the common assessment methodology of the project.
Full report in Bulgarian and a summary in English can be found at:
http://www.initiativeforhealth.org/blog/2017/12/12/nov-doklad-s-otsenka-na-nuzhdite/
Another good news from Bulgaria is that on 21 December 2017 the City Council of Sofia adopted the new members of the Municipal Committee on prevention and control of HIV/AIDS. With this act the municipality practically re-established the Committee and gave it a new start, after few years of inaction. The Committee will consist of representatives of the City Council of Sofia, municipal administration, other relevant state and municipal institutions and NGOs.
The first meeting of the new Committee is planned for January when it is expected to give start to the development of a city HIV strategy.
The act of the re-establishment of the Committee was intensively supported through the partnerships within the project Fast-track TB/HIV responses for key populations in EECA cities, involving coordinating NGOs in Sofia and the representatives of the key populations networks.
Senior Level Policy Dialogue
The Senior Level Policy Dialogue “Addressing HIV and TB Challenges: from Donor Support to Sustainable Health Systems” was organised in Tallinn, Estonia on 12 and 13 December 2017 as an official event in the programme of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The event, organised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and National Institute for Health Development from Estonia, WHO European Region, UNAIDS, and the Global Fund, brought together representatives of the health and financial ministries of Europe, the Balkan and Eastern Partnership countries, representatives of the European Commission, international organisations, as well as community representatives and institutions involved in funding programmes and offering services to tackle HIV and TB.
In Eastern Europe the fight against HIV and tuberculosis has largely been funded through international organisations (such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria). However, this kind of funding is not sustainable in the long term.
The participants searched for ways to smoothly transition from funding through foreign aid programmes to sustainable state funding. They outlined the best practices, challenges, opportunities and risks related to integrating HIV and TB programmes into a national health system. The discussions included the role and responsibility of various institutions and organisations in stopping the HIV and TB epidemics.
DPNSEE and 4 participating member organisations representatives (Cazas, Juventas, Margina and Viktorija) actively contributed to the meeting, including two panellists who gave a specific insight in the situation of the region. Both the experiences from South East Europe and challenges we face were presented, emphasized and mentioned by many participants. The meeting was also a good opportunity to establish contacts and generate ideas for future cooperation.
Participation of the SEE representatives was made possible by generous support from the Open Society Foundation.
EECA Civil Society Meeting
Preparing for the regional meeting “Addressing HIV and TB Challenges: from Donor Support to Sustainable Health Systems”, civil society organisations from Eastern Europe and Central Asia met on 11 December in Tallinn. Aim of the meeting was to consolidate and build opportunities for cooperation in advocacy efforts of civil society representatives during and after the meeting.
The pre-meeting gathered 14 representatives from civil society and community organisations mainly from South East European countries and regional community networks. Unfortunately because of heavy snow in the departure airports and delayed flights a lot of participants could not join.
There were two main issues of the meeting which of great importance for civil society and communities: transitioning of services to domestic funding and integration of it into the health and social care system.
The structure of the outcome document was presented and discussed. Next week key points from the document could be used for the plenary meeting of the Civil Society Forum of HIV, Hepatitis and Tuberculosis.
DPNSEE General Assembly
The Drug Policy Network South East Europe held its 2nd regular annual General Assembly in Belgrade, Serbia from 3rd to 5th December 2017. It was the opportunity to meet, analyse the work looking back on the year that almost ended and decide about the future work.
Thanks to the generous support from the Office for combating drugs of the Republic of Serbia, the Assembly was held in the Palace Serbia, the governmental representative building. Representatives of 15 out of 22 member organisations participated, including 2 newly recognised members.
Our distinguished guests at the Assembly were His Excellency Ambassador of Portugal Augusto Saraiva Peixoto and Director of the Office for Combating Drugs of the Government of Serbia Milan Pekić.
The Assembly adopted the report about the work in 2017 and financial report presenting the Network’s main activities. The plans for 2018 were also adopted, based on the strategic priorities proposed by the Board and ideas for possible projects and partnership building.
Changes in the Board were introduced to ensure that this governing body is active in implementing the action plan. Vlatko Dekov (HOPS, FYRO Macedonia) is elected new Chairperson and Nebojša Đurasović (Prevent, Serbia) new Vice-Chair. While Denis Dedajić (Margina, Bosnia Herzegovina), Marios Atzemis (Positive Voice, Greece) and Saša Mijović (4 Life, Montenegro) remain members of the Board as Secretary, Treasurer and Member, newly elected Board member Anna Lyubenova (Initiative for Health Foundation,IHF, Bulgaria) will serve as Deputy Secretary, and Erlind Plaku (Aksion Plus, Albania) as Deputy Treasurer.
In order to establish common positions, small group work was organised on key issues for which DPNSEE will issue statements in the future. Cannabis and Drug checking were specific topics for sharing and generating ideas.
Community Based Services for People Living with HIV and AIDS
The National Conference on Innovative Community Based Services for People Living with HIV and AIDS, held in Belgrade, Serbia on 1 December 2017, was also the final activity of two-year project “Towards standardization of community based social service provision for people living with HIV in Serbia”, implemented by the Union of Organizations of Serbia dealing with the protection of people living with HIV and AIDS (USOP) with partners: Žena plus, AID +, Centre AS, Sunce, Crvena linija, Stav + and Nova + (PLHIV associations from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Subotica and Pančevo). The project is part of the “European Union Support to an Inclusive Society” program, funded and implemented by the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor, Employment, Veterans’ Affairs and Social Affairs through the IPA Program (The Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance).
The conference addressed the activities of both civil and government sectors in response to the HIV epidemic, especially when it comes to social care, health care and legal assistance to people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV), but also prevention and the possibility of stopping the spread of infection, as well as reducing stigma and discrimination against this population.
The services are the basic means of achieving the goals of social protection. The Law on Social Protection recognizes five groups of services for which the standards were developed by the project or are in phase of development. In addition to these, other community-based innovative services have been developed in the community to respond to a wide range of people’s needs. One of the innovative services is peer support service for people living with HIV and AIDS offered by activists living with HIV and AIDS.
The LADDER project was concluded, and Diogenis was part of it!
The final conference of project LADDER was held in Strasbourg on 21 – 22 November 2017, and constituted a key opportunity to create new bonds and strengthen existing partnerships for the localisation of SDGs in the next years.
The conference marked three years of joint work within an extremely ambitious project, co-funded by the European Union and led by ALDA, gathering 27 partners and 19 associates from 19 EU and 17 non EU-countries. The unanimous commitment to continue the great work done so far in the field of development education is a great satisfaction for all of us, as well as the sign of LADDER’s sustainability.
The event, hosted by the Council of Europe and by the Region Grand Est, was opened by the welcome speech of Antonella Valmorbida, Secretary General of ALDA, and Alina Tatarenko, Head of the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform of the Council of Europe.
Diogenis actively participated in both the program and its final meeting. The project that was implemented in Athens and Thessaloniki by Diogenis last May, entitled “Drugs & SDGs: Development and Harm Reduction Policies”, under the auspices of the municipalities of Agios Dimitrios, Athens and Thessaloniki, accounted for the highest graduation rate during the evaluation of proposals due to its innovative approach.
The Strasbourg meeting, in addition to the project review, included work in groups, aimed at demonstrating and making proposals to local governments, on new actions to implement SDGs at the local level with the active involvement of civil society organizations.
