Tear drop spiral staircase. One might say that it is tearifying to look down from the top.
I apologize for slacking off on the blog posts over the past week. Last Thursday, we had one meeting at the "Djindjic Fund". We were presented with a documentary about the life of Zoran Djindjic, who ascended to the office of Prime Minister of Serbia by working with the opposition to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. After his assassination on 13 March 2003, his wife set up an NGO to continue pursuing Djindjic's vision of economic and cultural integration with Europe. After the film, we were able to chat with an alum of one of their programs, as well as a current participant in their German Business program. I think a lot of us found it interesting that the organization focuses on business and economics and attempts to stay out of every day politics, but Djindjic's life and death are saturated with political involvement.
On Friday, we began a three day training with CANVAS, which came out of the Otpor movement to overthrow Milosevic. Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we learned about Otpor's success in overthrowing Milosevic and the strategies they used, from understanding pluralistic power structures, potential allies, designing actions, media/propaganda strategies, and how to manage resources in a movement. The training was a good overall approach and can be applied to everything from keeping your town from cutting down a tree to toppling a dictator. The highlight of the training for me was getting to meet Srdja Popovic. He dropped in for a couple hours during the second day. I had the chance to ask him about the delicate balance between international support and international involvement in movements such as Otpor. His answer can be summed up in saying that movements like Otpor must have a uniformed approach to dealing with the international community by knowing what the movement needs and what the movement can get while not merely becoming a puppet for outside agendas and interests.
On Monday, we had a debrief as a class to discuss the training. After the debrief, I went to the 'lake' again with some folks for another afternoon in the sun. It was a great way to relax after spending three days in a stuffy conference room strategizing over different issues. That evening, we stayed in for some wine and card games.
Yesterday, we had one meeting with a representative from an organization called Praxis. Praxis originally worked to help solve refugee and internally displaced person issues in Serbia. I believe that in 1997, when Praxis began its work, there were about 500,000 displaced people in Serbia. Our presenter explained that about 90% of those people have been given the necessary assistance, about 10% are still in limbo after over a decade. Most of the work involves counseling and advocacy around tenancy and citizenship. Over the past few years, they have started working more with minority populations like the Roma people in Serbia to obtain identification and education services for them. We learned that once they get registered and in the system they can start benefiting from some of the social welfare and health care programs in Serbia. However, it is a burdensome process because the bureaucracy is very slow moving and there is miniscule political and administrative will to help refugees and other minorities.
Even more alarming than the sluggish process in the vulnerability of Praxis's constituents. Some have been living in shacks for the last twenty years and are considered legally invisible. Not surprisingly, this contributes to a relatively high rate of kidnapping and trafficking of persons. We heard one story about a 14 year old girl who was taken to Germany and forced to marry an older man. Luckily, she was rescued from the situation, but others have not been so fortunate. I also suspect that there the black market for fraudulent identity documents and corruption in the Balkans blossomed as a result of the conflict and amount of displaced people.
I digress. Here is the link to the organization's web page, which gives some more history about their origins and connections to the Norwegian government:http://www.praxis.org.rs/ .
Later today, we will be meeting with an advisor to the President of Serbia and getting another informative lecture from our TA. I am not completely knowledgeable about the situation, but the Serbian Parliament is in the process of creating a new government. The President has said that they should be done by the end of the week, but who knows. Ban Ki Moon was also here on Monday before going to Kosovo. I'm excited to hear a little bit from the horse's mouth about the Serbian political scene. Here's a link to an article about the proceedings (B92 is one of the major news outlets in Serbia and has a pretty decent English webpage): http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=07&dd=25&nav_id=81437
Here is another english website that covers the Balkans: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/page/all-balkans-home
Finally, here is a picture from inside the Three Carrots pub. I will write an update once I get the story on this wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment