South East Europe regional programme

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CONTEXT
In South-East Europe, the collapse of the former communist regimes in the beginning of the 1990s caused serious political, social and economic upheaval. The outbreak of the nationalist wars in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, the uprisings in Macedonia and the crisis that followed the “crash of the pyramidal systems” in Albania caused significant human, financial and material losses , increased the tensions between the communities and weakened social structures.

With more than 3 million people displaced, 250,000 killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and 10,000 victims of mines, the population has suffered greatly from these events, particularly people with disabilities whose prevalence has increased as a result of the conflicts. While peace is back, disabled people are still suffering from the aftermath of these upheavals and their physical, economical and material situation has worsened.

The international community, the United Nations, NATO, and international NGOs have played a major role in recent years in bringing peace and stability back to the countries of the region. These efforts have paid off, and with the improvement of the political climate, international relief agencies are now stepping down. Indeed, these countries have started a catching up process that should enable them to attain European political and economical standards in the medium term. During the transition period, international aid should continue to play an important role in supporting the local stakeholders in their efforts to restructure and improve their institutions, society and economies. But the ball is now essentially in the court of civil society and the local governments, and their success will depend on their capacity to enter a genuine change process by themselves, whilst avoiding nationalistic or reactionary temptations.

Handicap International has chosen to continue its involvement in a region that is no longer in the forefront of the international community’s concerns to help ensure that this transition is successful and does not overlook the most vulnerable.

BACKGROUND
Handicap International has been working for the disabled people of the region for more than 12 years (Romania in 1990, Serbia since 1992, Bosnia and Kosovo since 1994, Montenegro since 1995, Albania since 1998 and Macedonia since 1999). With programmes for the distribution of medical equipment, the training of professionals and the capacity-building of local stakeholders, Handicap International has developed a thorough understanding of the stakes and a wide network of partners, skills and resources.

STRATEGY
Our efforts focus on serving a cause: the equality of opportunity for disabled people, which is possible only if their participation in society is improved. In our experience, this participation means a change in approach by stakeholders: governments, professionals, communities, families, and people with disabilities themselves.
Our role is to support this change so that disabled people can regain their dignity and their individuality. With our partners we are fighting against a mechanical categorization, result of the former government regime, which limits the choice for people with disabilities to institutions, where cases of mistreatment are legion, or to abandonment, being left without resources or access to education, health services, or economic independence.
Offering services within reach of those who need them, developing the accessibility of existing services, taking the social environment, the abilities, and the desires of disabled people into account, finding responses to their personal needs, promoting as much as possible an independent life for all, these are the battles that we support and that we consider to be human rights.

To meet this challenge, we have set up a highly mobile multi-disciplinary team that offers technical support to the stakeholders in this process of change: advising, training and financial support to enhance their organizational and operational capabilities. We also offer the possibility of regional exchanges (e.g. conferences) and the production of targeted data (e.g. publications, websites). This broadens our base and also the ability of our partners to influence reform measures and attitudes. We currently have over 200 partners in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. Our partners include government ministers, institutions, universities, associations, parent groups, networks – all agents of change, driving forces behind the huge social reforms undertaken by the countries in transition.

ACTIVITIES
Our assistance projects revolve around 5 programmes, whose objectives converge on a common cause: the de-institutionalization of disability.

1) Empowerment of civil society movements
This project has resulted in the creation of a vast regional project called Share-SEE (Self-Help and Advocacy for Rights and Equal Opportunities – South-East Europe). It aims to enable members of civil society to advocate for greater respect of the human rights of disabled people. This project focuses primarily on creating scope for collaboration between civil society stakeholders and on building the capacity of specialised associations.

2) A regional disability observatory
Forum for the exchange and production of information necessary for change, which at the moment takes the form of a website and the publication of surveys and thematic reports.

3) Technical assistance to ministries involved in reform, with experts seconded to several countries. This technical assistance has already resulted in a reform of the system of categorization of disabled people in Serbia.

4) Support to the creation of alternative services, such as day care centres, counselling centres, access to personal assistants.
The programme concentrates on a group of a 6 pilot experiments being run by experienced associations such as Aurora in Romania, Karindom in Bulgaria, and the Centre for Independent Living in Serbia. The goal is to accompany these experiments, to document them in order to influence the authorities who are supposed to support them, and to test their viability in areas lacking in services (for example, northern Albania or Montenegro).

5) Training for professionals, which aims to reform the over-medicalised approach of rehabilitation professionals. This programme takes the form of partnerships with universities in the region, the Department of Physiotherapy in Pristina, the School of Orthoprosthesis in Bucharest, and organizations of disability professionals in Skopje.

BENEFICIARIES
The direct beneficiaries of the programmes are the members of civil society, the ministries and local institutions.

The final beneficiaries of all these activities are disabled people, more than 1 million in the region, who will benefit from the improvement of services and from the actions of their representatives.

RESOURCES
In 2003, at a time when the international community and international funding were withdrawing from the region, we restructured our 7 missions into 2 regional missions: one dedicated to demining programmes (Seermap), based in Sarajevo, and the other dedicated to programmes linked to people with disabilities (HI-SEE), based in Belgrade.

HI-SEE has a multicultural team of about 30 persons, including 6 international staff, based throughout the region, with varied and complementary backgrounds: doctors, physiotherapists, sociologists, political experts, financiers, accountants, statisticians, etc. 

CONTACTS
Velisava Vulovica 1
11000 Belgrade
Serbia and Montenegro
Tel. + 381 11 30 66 896
E-mail: office@hi-see.org