Tag: Milutin Milošević

SEE HIV Ministerial Meeting

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The Prime Minister and Minister of Health of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia hosted a South-Eastern European Ministerial Meeting on Sustainable Responses to HIV and TB in Skopje on 7 May 2018. The aim of the Ministerial Meeting was to discuss the progress, challenges and opportunities towards reaching sustainable responses to HIV and TB in South-Eastern Europe. Civil society representatives had an opportunity to join the high level representatives from all SEE countries, donors and global development partners and exchange about progress made and what remains to be done to meet the goal of ending the AIDS and tuberculosis epidemics in the region as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The ministers recognized increasing ownership of the national responses to the diseases, as external financial support including from the Global Fund is transitioning to support countries with the highest global burdens of disease and least economic capacity. The ministers expressed commitment to allocating domestic funding for and ensuring access to HIV and tuberculosis treatment for all, guided by governance structures that involve civil society and affected communities along with health professionals and technical partners. Still, a few comments from the civil organisations warned that the situation is far from satisfying and that “behind numbers are people about whom we need to care” – as underlined by the DPNSEE Board member Denis Dedajić.

DPNSEE representatives Vlatko Dekov, Chairman of the Board, Denis Dedajić, Secretary of the Board and Milutin Milošević, Executive Director, met with several Global Fund Board members, country representatives, donors and civil society colleagues. An important meeting was the one with Ekaterina Lukicheva from the Open Society Foundations International Harm Reduction Development Program and Raminta Štuikyte, consultant about the budget advocacy and implementation project and other ideas for future cooperation.

Photo with Peter Sands, the Executive Director of the Global Fund

The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, at its 39th Board meeting, highlighted the importance of strengthening sustainability and supporting successful transition to domestic financing to build long-term solutions and achieve greater health security.

The Global Fund is committed to being a good partner in working toward sustainability, acting as a catalyst to additional investment, filling short-term gaps, and addressing bottlenecks to successful transition to more domestic funding. While shifting financing often includes challenges, including how to effectively fund civil society, transition increases country ownership and is necessary to end epidemics.

An important news for the region is that the Board approved an approach to ineligible upper-middle income countries in crisis where economic and epidemiological metrics are collapsing and where spill overs threaten regional progress against HIV, TB and malaria.

More about the Board meeting is available at the Global Fund website following this link >>>

Meetings with the Open Society Foundations representatives

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On the margins of the dialogue between civil society and donors, representatives of the Open Society Foundations visited DPNSEE office on 18 January 2018: Daniel Wolfe, director of International Harm Reduction Development, Julia Greenberg, director of Governance and Financing, and Ekaterina Lukicheva, program officer for the International Harm Reduction Development Program (all three from the OSF Public Health Programme) along with Raminta Štuikyte, consultant. Vice-President Nebojša Đurasović, Secretary of the Board Denis Dedajić and Executive Director Milutin Milošević welcomed the distinguished guests.

DPNSEE hosts presented work and potentials of the Network and answered many questions. Guests were especially interested by the fact that DPNSEE gathers member organisations from all SEE countries and that it has a wide approach to the issue, including various elements of drug policy. They underlined that their full withdrawal from the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia is not good so they decided to assign funds to it. In 2017, they already supported two CSO projects in Montenegro with and they still have funds for support to Bosnia Herzegovina, Romania and Serbia which were not distributed, while for 2018 they have planned additional support to the region. Agreement was reached, in principle, that DPNSEE will implement a project on budget advocacy and implementation in Serbia, on local and national level. DPNSEE also proposed such an initiative on the regional level. Discussions about potential cooperation extended throughout the next two days of meetings.

Before the meetings in Belgrade, OSF and GF representatives visited Montenegro to discuss implementation of the two project they finance since 2017 and preparations for the national project application to the Global Fund. Our member organisations Cazas and Juventas were involved in the meetings.

Representatives of Margina and Viktorija had working meetings with both OSF and GF representatives. Result of the meetings is that the same support as the one for Montenegro is proposed for Bosnia Herzegovina, for a similar project adjusted to the structure of the country. Two projects are foreseen: one on accreditation of the harm reduction services in the Republic of Srpska and other on social contracting in the Federation of BH. The trigger for this decision was presentation which Denis had as panellist.

The OSF visit ended with visit to the Drop-in for drug users and Shelter for sex workers in Novi Sad managed by Prevent. The visit was very effective, with excellent presentation of Prevent’s work and very emotional discussion with three sex workers in the Shelter. At the end the guests (including representatives of SWAN and Mama Cash foundation) haven’t made any concrete promise for support but they expressed their willingness to help finding donors. The visit should be used as a model for welcoming donors and convincing them to finance services.

At the Drop-in for drug users

Focus on transition

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Delegation of the project “Strengthening NGO capacity and promoting public Health and human rights oriented Drug Policy in South East Europe ” visits Bulgaria from 29 to 30 May. The visit is part of the efforts for the enlargement of the Network as an essential prerequisite for making it a strong and reliable partner.

The main aims of the visit are to: (a) present DPNSEE to the Bulgarian society, (b) build strong relationships, enhance contacts and improve drug policy dialogue with the relevant authorities, state institutions, policy makers and NGOs, (c) explore opportunities for partnerships and collaboration and (d) discuss possible applications of local civil society organizations for membership in DPNSEE. The experiences from Bulgaria, country that is in transition from communist to EU member state, are of interest, especially because it will hold the EU presidency in the first half of 2018.

The delegation consists of 3 people: Marios Atzemis, DPNSEE Board member, Milutin Milošević, Executive director and Sofia Galinaki, Advocacy Officer, Diogenis (DPNSEE member organisation).

The first day of the visit, the delegation had an interesting exchange with Dr Vyara Georgieva, the Chief Expert in the Ministry of Health for the programmes financed by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Petar Tsintsarski, Consultant for the program Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS. The key learning points from this meeting are that the HIV/AIDS problem should be seen from various angles besides medical: cultural, social etc. and that financing services should be concentrated on the level of local communities.

During the meeting in the National Centre for Addiction with Momtchil Vassilev, Director of the National Focal Point on Drugs and Drug Addictions and Nikolay Butorin, Expert on Training Programmes, the delegation got a lot of data about drugs in the country. Improvement of Early Warning System for new psychoactive substances was an issue of joint interest.

Meeting in the National Centre for Addiction

For the second day of the visit, meetings were first scheduled with two civil society organisations: Initiative for Health Foundation and Centre for humane policy. Our colleagues gave us a realistic and open vies on the situation in the country, especially in the light of termination of the Global Fund support that will cause closing of services to drug users.

Dr Tsvetelina Raicheva, who recently directed the National Addiction Centre provided more statistics about the situation. At the Centre for the Study of Democracy the representatives of the network had a meeting with Mr. Dimitar Markov (Senior Analyst and Project Director, Law Program) and Mr. Atanas Rusev (Senior Analyst, Security Program). The Security program implements criminology research, actively contributes to the Bulgaria’s policy debate on organized crime and participates in projects on crime and security issues. The issues of inadequate funding and bureaucracy in the field of drugs were highlighted in this meeting as one of the biggest barriers at policy level. Moreover, the need for more action in the issue of immigration and its connection to drug use through several routes has to be identified and addressed.

With our friends from Initiative for Health Foundation and Centre for humane policy

Learning about the good experiences and challenges in Croatia

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Representatives of the Drug Policy Network in South East Europe (DPNSEE) visited Croatia from 22 to 24 March 2017. This activity is part of a series of country visits within the framework of the project “Strengthening NGO capacity and promoting public Health and human rights oriented Drug Policy in South East Europe” as described within the work plan for 2017 and it was undertaken by NGO “Diogenis Drug Policy Dialogue” – the lead organization of the project – in close cooperation with DPNSEE. The delegation – consisting of Nebojša Đurasović, Deputy Treasurer and DPNSEE Board member, Milutin Milošević, DPNSEE Executive director and Sofia Galinaki, Diogenis Advocacy Officer – visited local authorities, institutions and NGOs working in the field of drugs based in the capital Zagreb and the cities of Split and Rijeka.

With Nena from the NGO Help

The visit was part of the efforts for the enlargement of the Network as an essential prerequisite for making it a strong and reliable partner. The main aims of the visit were to: (a) present DPNSEE to the Croatian society, (b) build strong relationships, enhance contacts and improve drug policy dialogue with the relevant authorities, state institutions, policy makers and NGOs, (c) explore opportunities for partnerships and collaboration and (d) discuss possible applications of local civil society organizations for membership in DPNSEE. More specifically, the delegation came in contact, discussed and exchange important information and experiences with: representatives from the Office for Combating Drugs Abuse of the Republic of Croatia,  Mr. Ranko Ostojić  – recent vice Prime minister and Minister of Interior, currently Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Domestic Policy and National Security,  representatives from the NGOs ‘LET’ – based in Zagreb, ‘HELP’ – based in Split, ‘TERRA’, ‘VIDA’, and ‘OASA’ – based in Rijeka and representatives from the Educational Institute for Public Health of the Split – Dalmatia county.

Ilinka and Dejan hosted us in Terra

The most important observation the delegation gained was that the governmental institutions operate in a very effective way, using an interdisciplinary approach. There is a well-organized and structured system in place, which covers the entire range of needs related to drug use. The system is decentralised, so that each of the 21 counties (županije) has its own tasks and responsibilities. Further on, local authorities and institutions take their own part and that is usually very well coordinated at county level. Moreover, the strong and ongoing cooperation between the competent state agencies and local Civil Society organizations significantly contributes in the overall implementation of the Croatian drug policy in a consistent way.

More detailed information regarding the: programme and preparation of the visit, structure of the Croatian drug policy system, important projects implemented within the 10-year Croatian Drug Strategy (2007-2017), harm reduction field, drug law reform, role of civil society in the implementation of drug policy, areas of improvement and the potential of future cooperation can be found in the full report available on request from the DPNSEE Office.

A warm welcome in NGO Vida

Serbian Visions – where civil society meets business sector

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German – Serbian Chamber of Commerce (Deutsch-Serbischen Wirtschaftskammer  http://serbien.ahk.de/), in cooperation with the Serbian Chamber of Commerce (http://www.pks.rs/) organised the second multi congress Serbian Visions on 26 and 27 November 2016 at the hotel Radisson Blu Old Mill in Belgrade. The aim of organizing the only multi was strengthening the role of civilian movements within the country as well as creating more favourable economic environment by emphasizing important country-development activities.

The event encompassed 60 two hour long sessions on a number of topics: human rights issues, economics,
education, culture, health care, environmental protection, the EU integrations, security, innovations and
other programs which represent a vision of better future for Serbia. Session hosts were NGOs, institutes,
associations, universities and faculties, groups of professionals and companies, using different types of
presentations: discussions, forums, presentations, workshops, seminars, movies, etc.

Drug Policy Network South East Europe hosted the session on “Sustainability of support services to drug
users”. DPNSEE Board members Denis Dedajić and Saša Mijović, together with the Executive Director
Milutin Milošević, presented the situation in Serbia and the region and also some ideas for action that can
help make the difference and ensure regular and comprehensive services.

Although not many people participated in the session due to extremely unpopular term (Sunday at 16:00),
the discussion was very interesting and fruitful.

Potential for cooperation on justice and home affairs

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DPNSEE Board member Denis Dedajić and Executive Director Milutin Milošević visited the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), the successor of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, who focuses on promotion and enhancement of regional cooperation in South East Europe. The main tasks of the RCC are to represent the region, assist the SEECP, monitor regional activities, exert leadership in regional cooperation, provide a regional perspective in donor assistance – notably the EU’s Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (c) programme – and support increased involvement of civil society in regional activities. The RCC functions as a focal point for regional cooperation in SEE and its key role is to generate and coordinate developmental projects of a wider, regional character, to the benefit of each individual participant, and create an appropriate political climate susceptible to their implementation.

Justice and home affairs are one of the areas of cooperation in the framework of the RCC. Fighting serious and organised crime is one of the areas for which RCC Strategy and Work Programme 2014-2016 envisages assistance to the SEE governments in meeting the EU accession criteria through the regional cooperation.

DPNSEE representatives had a very interesting information sharing meeting with Mrs Ivana Goranić, the Expert on Governance for Growth working on justice issues on 18 August 2016. Several possibilities for cooperation related to the issue of drugs were identified, including exchange and partnership of police and justice structures. The RCC offers grants and DPNSEE will be interested to prepare a project proposal in 2017.

Press conference to presentation and promotion of the activities of the project “Strengthening NGO capacity and promoting public health and human right oriented drug policy in South East Europe“

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The Members of DPNSEE will have a press conference in EU info center in Belgrade, on Thursday 1st September, regarding presentation and promotion of the activities of the project “Strengthening NGO capacity and promoting public health and human right oriented drug policy in South East Europe”.
The speakers on the conference will be Mr Thanasis Apostolou president of DPNSEE, Mr Nebojša Djurasović director on Prevent organisation, member of the DPNSEE and executive director of the DPNSEE  Mr Milutin Milošević.
More detailed agenda on the conference you can find in the link below