The governments of countries in Southeast Europe should provide greater financial support to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that implement harm reduction programs, and to this end it is important to build budget advocacy capacities in their countries.
This was assessed on the first day of a three-day training organized by the NGO Juventas and the Drug Policy Network in Southeast Europe (DPNSEE), within the project Advocacy and monitoring/budget monitoring in the countries of Southeast Europe, which was supported by the Open Society Foundation and the Eurasian Alliance for Harm Reduction .
Coordinator of the Program of direct assistance for socially vulnerable categories of people in NGO Juventas, Marija Radović, said that this organization is one of the 22 members of the Network since 2015, when the network formally existed.
"I think it is very important for the organization to be part of the Network, because our goal is to find ways to create a public policy on drugs, which will be based on respect for human rights, social inclusion and respect for public health, through an open and constructive dialogue with other organizations Radović said.
According to her, organizations that implement harm reduction programs in Montenegro face certain problems.
"First of all, for years it has been a problem of not recognizing the importance of implementing the harm reduction program, whose goal is the prevention of blood-borne sexually transmitted infections," stated Radović.
She said that NGOs also faced the problem in 2015, when the Global Fund, which had been financing this program of reduced damages for years, withdrew from Montenegro, in the sense that it was Montenegro's turn to take over the financing of those programs.
"However, it was more difficult. We made progress, because the state still recognized the importance of all the services we provide to socially vulnerable categories of the population, and at one point, through the projects of the Ministry of Health, we managed to maintain our services. But that support should be much greater. We are certainly working on advocating that and we hope that its importance will be recognized in the future," said Radović.
The representative of the HOPS organization from Macedonia, Vlatko Dekov, believes that organizations working in the Balkans do not do much in terms of budget, monitoring and advocacy.
"It is very important for us, as non-governmental organizations, as an added value of our daily work because in this way we can see how our states create a budget, how that budget is spent and whether it is spent according to the purpose for which it was created, to Are there specific budget items that are not spent in a certain period, with the unique goal of finding financial resources that would be better spent in the interest of all citizens, especially for financing non-governmental organizations that provide services to marginalized communities," Dekov pointed out.
He assessed that the countries of the Balkans are still not rich enough to finance all the programs implemented by non-governmental organizations.
Dekov assessed that one of the main reasons for holding the training is that NGOs should focus more on budget advocacy in their countries.
"With budgetary advocacy, NGOs can achieve more. First, to help the state see how it is spending money - whether it is spending as planned. Second, to find money that is significant to finance other programs. Third, to see the reality of financing programs that are focused on marginalized communities in the country," explained Dekov.
He said that the most important thing is that NGOs, which provide services to marginalized communities, can finance programs from the budget of the Government or a relevant Ministry.
The representative of the Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality (ESE) organization Darko Antik said that the main goal of the three-day training is for organizations that implement the harm reduction program to create a budget advocacy plan and activities that, as he stated, will contribute to the state takes responsibility for financing harm reduction programs.
He said that Macedonia has started issuing money from the budget to finance the damage reduction program since last year.
"The amount of money allocated from the state budget is minimal in order for these programs to succeed in being implemented in Macedonia. The reason why the state took over the financing of these organizations resulted in the joint work of all organizations," said Antik.
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