South East Europe Archives - Drug Policy Network SEE

Global Organized Crime Index reports about SEE

The Global Organized Crime Index, produced by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), is the first tool of its kind designed to assess levels of organized crime and resilience to organized criminal activity. The Index is the result of a two-year endeavour to evaluate levels of crime and resilience. It includes in its rankings all the UN member states – 193 countries.

The results, which draw from a comprehensive dataset informed by experts worldwide, rank countries according to two metrics: their criminality on a score from 1 to 10 (lowest to highest organized crime levels), which in turn is based on their criminal markets score and criminal actors score; and their resilience to organized crime, from 1 to 10 (lowest to highest resilience levels).

Key findings of the report include:

More than three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries with high levels of criminality, and in countries with low resilience to organized crime
Of all the continents, Asia has the highest levels of criminality
Human trafficking is the most pervasive of all criminal markets globally
Democracies have higher levels of resilience to criminality than authoritarian states
State actors are the most dominant agents in facilitating illicit economies and inhibiting resilience to organized crime
Many countries in conflict and fragile states experience acute vulnerability to organized crime

The Global Organized Crime Index is available following this link>>>.

DPNSEE extracted segments from this report related to drugs in countries of South East Europe. Here is the document we created>>>.

Curriculum for working with youth at risk

One of the outcomes of the “No risk, no borders for young people” project, coordinated by the Drug Policy Network South East Europe (DPNSEE) together with the project partners Aksion Plus (Albania), Margina (Bosnia Herzegovina), Juventas (Montenegro), Prevent and Re Generation (Serbia) and supported by the Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) within its 4th Open Call co-financed by the European Union, is the regional Curriculum for working with youth at risk.

The Curriculum was developed using a comprehensive educational approach, fully based on principle “youth for youth”. By including the youth in its design, testing and applying, it enabled the full match of the Curriculum with the present youth interests and issues of both the youth at risk as its beneficiaries and “other” youth.

It includes sections on Terms and definitions, Course delivery mode, Educational tools and materials (from international level) for working with youth at risk, Online tools for organizing educational activities, and four modules on The issues, The communities, The approaches and Systemic approach with 15 different topics.

The Curriculum was produced by external experts appointed through an open call: Megi Xhumari, Ioanis Papadopoulos and Aleksandar Trudić. Young people which participated in the project implementation, participating in a focus group, project team and trainers contributed with their expertise, ideas and comments.

The Curriculum was produced in English and is available in Albanian and Bosnian – Montenegrin – Serbian versions.

Kurrikula për të punuar me të rinjtë në rrezik

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Curriculum for working with youth at risk

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Kurikulum za rad sa mladima u riziku

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Budget analysis in countries of South East Europe

One of the most important activities of the regional project Budget Advocacy and Monitoring in countries of South East Europe was Assessment of the national budgets. The national analysis were published in separate documents, with the regional survey as a summary of all three national analysis including experience of a similar exercise conducted in Macedonia.

Bosnia Herzegovina

In scope of the poject, Association Margina, the national coordinator of the project in Bosnia Herzegovina, published the budget analysis for the Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.

The document entitled “Analiza budžeta Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine i Republike Srpske 2016 – 2018” was produced by mr sci Faruk Hadžić dipl ecc with support of the Association Margina team.

Besides budget analysis of the two entities for each of the three years, the document also includes an analysis of the Health Fund budget in both entities with specific insight into the Solidarity Fund and analysis of the excise tax rates on cigarettes and tobacco.

The Analysis of the budgets in Bosnia and Herzegovina is available following this link>>>.

Montenegro

In Montenegro, the budget analysis includes data from the ministries of Health, Labor and Social Welfare and Justice. It also includes analysis of the programmes that civil society organisations implement with the support fro the authorities.

The aim of the Analysis is to explore level of sustainability of the existing programmes and explore new models that would allow for better functioning of the programmes.

The document “Kako premostiti jaz u finansiranju i ostvariti održivost odgovora na HIV: Analiza budžeta Ministarstava zdravlja, rada i socijalnog staranja i pravde” was prepared by the Juventas team and external consultant Vladan Đekić.

The Analysis is available following this link>>>.

Serbia

The budget analysis in Serbia was prepared by the team of consultants engaged by Association Prevent.

The surveys were of a meta-analytic nature, conducted on data and information obtained on the basis of publicly available documents published by state bodies: the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance, the Parliament of the Republic of Serbia, the Customs Administration and the Agency for Business Registers.

The analysis clearly shows a continuous decrease in the allocation of funds for preventive health care, regardless of whether the total budget of the Ministry is increased or decreased and whether the budget of the Ministry of Health occupies a higher or lower percentage in the national budget for a given year. The most significant finding is the constantly present difference in the planned and executed budget – the allocated/spent funds are continuously reduced compared to those planned.

The analysis “Програми смањења штете у буџету Републике Србије” of the budgets in Serbia is available following this link>>>

Besides the analysis of the budget of the Ministry of Health which was produced, DPNSEE has prepared and presented the Analysis of the public calls for prevention of the Ministry of Health. This analysis is available following this link>>>.

Another document prepared in scope of the project in Serbia is the Analysis of the national fund from opportunity of prosecution (deferring of a criminal prosecution and dismissing a criminal complaint due to a genuine remorse of a suspect). This analysis is available following this link>>> (updated version after using documents received from the Ministry of Justice).

The funding organisation of the project Eurasian Harm Reduction Association (EHRA) published a case study which looks at the implementation of this project with the objectives to:

Document the pilot in 3 Balkan countries and to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and to develop suggestions for improvement; and,
Document the results, successes, and challenges of the budget advocacy projects supported through this approach.

The document is available following this link>>>

Open Budget Survey 2017 in SEE

The Open Budget Survey, prepared by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), is a comprehensive analysis and survey that evaluates whether governments give the public access to budget information and opportunities to participate in the budget process at the national level. The Survey also accesses the capacity and independence of formal oversight institutions. The IBP works with civil society partners in 115 countries to collect the data for the Survey.

The Survey is the world’s only independent, comparative assessment of the three pillars of public budget accountability: transparency, oversight and public participation.

This publication includes segments from the Executive summary and information available from the Survey about several countries of South East Europe: Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.

The document is available following this link>>>

Statements

The Drug Policy Network South East Europe aims to promote objective and open debate on the effectiveness, direction and content of the national, regional and international drug policy and to advance constructive recommendations for policy makers.

The Network issues Statements to present our join views on issues of importance for drug policies.

The DPNSEE statement on Drug checking

DPNSEE is publishing this statement on the occasion of 31 March – The International Drug Checking Day, in order to stress the importance of implementation of drug checking services as an early intervention in different drug use settings.

This statement outlines the attitudes of the Network following that drug checking represents an essential aspect of public health policy as recommended by the World Health Organization and has been further developed by both EU agencies and various European nations.

Download PDF of the statement

The DPNSEE statement on Drug checking<<<

Version in Serbian is also available

Izjava o dostupnosti servisa za testiranje droga>>>

European Union Enlargement Country Reports

Traditionally, the European Commission adopted its annual assessment of the implementation of reforms in the Western Balkan partners and Turkey, together with recommendations on the next steps for those countries, and published its annual country reports.

Accession negotiations have been opened with candidate countries Montenegro (2012), Serbia (2014), and Turkey (2005). North Macedonia is a candidate country since 2005 and Albania since 2014. Bosnia and Herzegovina (application to join the EU submitted in February 2016) and Kosovo* (Stabilisation and Association Agreement entered into force in April 2016) are potential candidates.

DPNSEE extracts segments related to drugs from each of the country reports and pack them in one document.

The document we prepared with reports for 2017 is downloadable following this link>>>

Full versions of the Commission’s documents from 2017 are available following this link>>>

The document we prepared with reports for 2018 is downloadable following this link>>>

Full versions of the Commission’s documents from 2018 are available following this link>>>.

The document we prepared with reports for 2019 is downloadable following this link>>>.

Full versions of the Commission’s documents from 2019 are available following this link>>>.

The document we prepared with reports for 2021 is downloadable following this link>>>.

Full versions of the Commission’s documents from 2021 are available following this link>>>.

The document we prepared with reports for 2022 is downloadable following this link>>>.

Full versions of the Commission’s documents from 2022 are available following this link>>>.

Addressing the acute funding crisis facing harm reduction services in South-East Europe

The Drug Policy Network South East Europe published the document Addressing the acute funding crisis facing harm reduction services in South-East Europe with the aim to emphasize the acute funding crisis facing harm reduction services in Balkan states and South-East Europe, to influence the policies and actions of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other donors. It is a complementary part of a larger body of work being done by a wide range of partners – including the Open Society Foundation and the International Drug Policy Consortium – to document the consequences of changes in donor eligibility policies, and to urgently try and influence donor policy away from a withdrawal from middle-income countries in South East Europe.

DPNSEE worked with their partners and members across the region to gather case studies of Opioid Substitution Therapy stock-outs or shortages, service closures or reductions in coverage, and other critical issues experienced by civil society partners in South East Europe related to transitions away from Global Fund support. Through interviews with key stakeholders and desk-based research, DPNSEE gathered information, experiences, feedback and recommendations from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo*, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.

The material was collected in November – December 2017. Since then, it was used only internally. The document was published and shared with the participants of the South East Europe pre-Conference meeting, held in November 2018 in Bucharest, Romania.

Click here to download the document >>>

Glossary of terms used in drug policy

Glossary is an alphabetical list of terms used in a domain of drug policy, with the definitions for those terms. It contains explanations of concepts and terms related to the field of drugs and relevant related matters. We hope that it will contribute to better understanding the drug problem in a more empathic manner.

The Glossary should serve firstly to member organisations in a way that will help in process of harmonization of opinions and attitudes. This material will also serve a wider range of groups of people including policy makers, stakeholders, activists, the media, police, judiciary and others.

The Glossary will be updated from time to time. If you find difficulties in understanding some other terms used in drug policy, please don’t hesitate to contact DPNSEE and we shall be more than happy to find a definition and add it to the Glossary.

With the support of the member organisations, DPNSEE will prepare versions in various local SEE languages.

At our webpage, you can access interactive version where access to terms will be quicker and translations available promptly here>>>

Download the Glossary in various languages: