A HOPE for The Balkans
It has been exciting and inspiring to get involved with the humanitarian sector in the Balkans. April 2010 saw the beginning of what we hope will be a lasting working relationship with humanitarian organisations across the region. Our aims in going to the Balkans were to build bridges between communities and across borders, where development and humanitarian work can be seen as a neutral space. We wanted to help improve quality by identifying locally relevant best practice, learning from each other as peers and cooperating with each other.
More specifically we wanted to examine the position of NGOs in the Balkans, with a particular focus on relations between communities; explore the particular challenges they face, and what opportunities there are, to enhance relationships between NGOs from different parts of the Balkans and with members of the international community, and to explore the future role of The Humanitarian Forum in the Balkans.
Our Conference in Skopje, Macedonia was a great success, despite the problems of transport caused by Iceland's volcano. Fifty organisations came together, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia and Albania, as well as from our international partners. Although the secretariat and several European THF members were sadly stranded, the conference went ahead, and made excellent progress.
Participants were clearly passionate about creating a strong, diverse, region-wide civil society, one which includes and gives voice to the many different ethnic and religious groups. Actors from region worked together over the two days to find the common ground and shared strengths of their different societies. They identified the challenges and weaknesses of civil society in the Balkans, but more importantly worked to find solutions. Amongst other plans, participants proposed a series of Region-wide training sessions to improve accountability, capacity building and communications, and suggested a second A HOPE conference to ensure new plans are followed through.
This is a promising first step for THF's involvement with this passionate and committed region. We look forward with optimism to future involvement.
The Outcomes of the Balkans Conference are available here.
