During the public hearing on the Action Plan Proposal for the period 2024-2026 for the implementation of the Strategy for the creation of a stimulating environment for the development of the civil sector in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2022-2030, on behalf of women's organizations, the Network of Women Against Violence sent an Open Letter to the Minister, to the Sector for Cooperation with Civil Society and to the Council for the Creation of an Encouraging Environment for the Development of Civil Society. The immediate reason for this is serious security threats to women from organizations in the south of Serbia.
Members of women's organizations with decades of experience in providing specialized support to women who have experienced male violence and their children have been going through continuous, multi-year marginalization, belittlement, exclusion, exhaustion; their physical and psychological safety is being threatened and/or unjustified criminal charges are being filed against them. The main reason for such a situation is the decision of these organizations not to keep silent about non-transparent decision-making and financing, conflict of interest and corruption in the allocation of public funds to fictitious and party organizations.
The organizations, 28 in total, and three organization networks, demanded that the planned measures and activities in the new Action Plan guarantee the organizations and their members full protection of physical and psychological integrity, free legal protection against verbal and physical attacks, a responsible and transparent decision-making process of the evaluation committees, rank and select project proposals, transparent financing of projects and activities of organizations, transparent and publicly available information about the implemented activities for which budget funds have been approved.
You can read more about the requirements of the signatory organizations of the Open Letter HERE.
The Ministry of Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue, the Sector for Cooperation with Civil Society and the Council for Creating a Supporting Environment for the Development of Civil Society responded to the Open Letter on the same day and proposed a meeting with representatives of local women's organizations in Leskovac for 12 July 2024.
After the meeting, the Ministry posted news about the meeting, which you can see HERE.
Women's organizations, participants of the meeting, issued a press release informing and highlighting the problems they face, which are primarily related to the security and transparency of the financing of local projects and their activities. They emphasized the need to strengthen internal audits of departments that allocate funds, and to make their reports publicly available; to achieve close and continuous cooperation with local authorities and institutions (such as the Police and the Social Welfare Center); that competent institutions react more seriously to digital violence; that the Ministry for Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue and other competent ministries remind of the recommendations of competent local bodies that do not perform their duties, which affects the safety of human rights defenders or/and the lack of transparent data on the allocation of public funds to other organizations.
The representatives of the Ministry, the Sector for Cooperation with Civil Society and the Council for the Creation of a Supportive Environment for the Development of Civil Society pointed out that: the currently formulated working version of the Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy for the Creation of a Supportive Environment for the Development of Civil Society refers to local governments as much as possible measures in relation to the way of writing the National Strategy and AP; plannig trainings for professionals who will check the documentation and work of civil society organizations so that they can recognize fictitious organizations more effectively; planning regular visits to local organizations as of October 2024; the new Action Plan will also include guidelines for non-financial assistance (for example, space for organizations); concerning various attacks, it should clearly stated that it was an attack on an activist or defender of human rights.
You can read the announcement of the women's organizations after the meeting with the representatives of the Sector and the Council HERE.