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GPKT Meeting Report 9

The Kumanovo Conference and NGO Forum

 Transfrontier Co-operation between
Kosovo, South Serbia and North Macedonia

‘Citizens for Peace and Development’
Conference and NGO Forum

25 - 26 September 2004 / Kumanovo

Contents:

I. Executive Summary
II. Background
III. Proceedings and General Conclusions
IV. Working Group Conclusions

I. Executive Summary

The ‘Citizens for Peace and Development’ Conference and NGO Forum on Transfrontier Co-operation between Kosovo, South Serbia and Northern Macedonia was held on 25 - 26 September 2004. Co-organised by the EastWest Institute (EWI), the Council of Europe and the Local Democracy Agency Kosovo, the meeting was hosted by the Municipality of Kumanovo at the Kumanovo Cultural Centre. The conference and NGO Forum, or ‘Fair’, welcomed over 300 participants, including more than 50 NGOs from the Gjilan / Gnjilane – Preševo – Kumanovo – Trgovište micro-region.

The NGO Fair

Thirty stalls were set up by local NGOs and community groups in the Kumanovo Community Centre, presenting projects and activities from a variety of organisations throughout the micro-region, and allowing the participants the chance to learn, and to make new contacts and exchange experiences with their peers from other towns and areas.

The Conference

The opening sessions of the conference brought together high-level speakers from key international and regional organisations and institutions, as well as senior governmental representatives, to discuss the opportunities for progress on transfrontier co-operation and specific next steps in this direction. The discussions within the four workshops which formed the core of the conference built upon previous meetings of Working Groups on Education, Youth, Women’s and Media issues co-ordinated by the EWI and also outlined concrete next steps for action.

In brief, the next steps agreed upon included:
The establishment of a GPKT Project Council to foster communication and co-operation amongst the various agencies newly supporting transfrontier activities in the micro-region.
The establishment of a more formalised GPKT Education Committee on the basis of the existing working group, to work on specific educational issues and to solidify communications and strategically lead the transfontier education co-operation process.
The formation of a GPKT Youth Council to facilitate the implementation of various key activities proposed, including capacity building, work on mediation and changing mind-sets, and joint advocacy to ensure better representation of youth in local and national decision-making.
The undertaking of research on gender-related issues in the micro-region, as the lack of detailed information poses a barrier to the development of activities to address problems on women’s societal and community status, women’s economic status and social care issues affecting women.
The establishment of a joint GPKT editorial board to manage proposed joint programming, and to act as a co-ordinating mechanism for the various other micro-region media co-operation activities suggested by participants.

The conference ended with statements from the respective Mayors, who underlined the strong support expressed throughout the conference for continued and increased co-operation across the micro-region, including support for the more active participation of the recently-included municipality in the micro-region, Trgovište. The co-organisers, EWI and the Council of Europe, also closed with strong commitments to continuing and building on the valuable transfrontier co-operation achievements to date, with concrete EWI GPKT project activities in the coming weeks and months.

II. Conference Background:
The Gjilan / Gnjilane-Preševo-Kumanovo-Trgovište (GPKT) Project

In June of 2002 the Mayors of 15 municipalities representing different nationalities and political persuasions from Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia met in Kumanovo, at Mayor Kovacevski’s invitation and issued a joint Memorandum of Understanding seeking closer political and economic co-operation so that they may overcome some of the problems created in the last decade but also to learn from one another, and co-ordinate their development strategies.

Responding to the specific needs presented by the local authorities in the ‘Kumanovo Memorandum of Co-operation’, the Mayors of the area, along with the EastWest Institute (EWI) and Misha Glenny’s organisation SEE Change 2004, launched a comprehensive project supporting institutional transfrontier co-operation towards the stabilisation and development of the Gjilan/Gnjilane-Preševo-Kumanovo (GPK) micro-region. In May 2004, at a Strategic Mayoral Meeting organised by EWI in the aftermath of the March violence in Kosovo, Mayors Kovacevski, Halimi and Haziri again pledged their commitment to the GPK micro-region initiative, reaffirming the relevance of the project in the context of the demonstrations in Kosovo. It was furthermore decided by the Mayors at this time to engage the majority Serb municipality of Trgovište in South Serbia in the micro-region’s activities, thus confirming their commitment to ensuring the multi-ethnic nature of the micro-region initiative.

The EastWest Institute, in co-operation with the Council of Europe, had already facilitated the launch of the Niš-Sofia-Skopje ‘EuroBalkans’ Euroregion in 2003, the culmination of two years of working across the borders with 66 border municipalities, as well as businesses, associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academic institutions. Both Kumanovo and Preševo have been partners in this initiative, which brings together the major urban centres of this region. The GPK initiative was thus launched within the broader framework of the Euroregion EuroBalkans, with the continuing support of the Stability Pact for SEE.
The GPKT initiative is predicated upon the view that the instability and cross-border crime which has characterized the area comprising Gjilan/Gnjilane in Kosovo, Preševo in Southern Serbia and Kumanovo in North Macedonia, is a function more of the socio-economic isolation and underdevelopment of the three parts of this once vibrant market region, than of the often-cited ethnic conflict in the area. The project’s overarching aim is thus to further societal reform, inter-communal stability and economic development by tackling local problems via common transfrontier solutions and by facilitating the removal of the major obstacles to legitimate commercial and social co-operation.
To date, transfrontier municipal working groups and co-ordination points have been established and a full interactive Transfrontier Co-operation Needs Assessment and Baseline Analysis has been led. This, alongwith research undertaken by the European Stability Initiative (ESI), form an underpinning to joint development planning.
In addition, a series of joint events, transfers of experience and strategic planning workshops have been held in jointly identified priority areas, launching a large-scale process of institutional transfrontier co-operation. Examples of successful jointly-organised activities include workshops to form long-term partnerships and initiatives for youth groups and media from the region, as well as a school children’s ‘competition day’ held in Preševo for 140 children, teachers and parents representing all ethnic communities from across the micro-region. In addition, the major policy obstacles to legitimate commercial and social cross-border contact have been taken up at national levels and through policy forums targeting the Brussels policy community. (For further information please contact EWI.)

III. Proceedings and General Conclusions

The opening session of the conference was chaired by Mr. Klaus Schuman (Director General of Political Affairs, Council of Europe) and Mayor Kovacevski of Kumanovo, who both noted the importance of the GPKT transfrontier co-operation initiative, and the event itself, within the broader framework of European stability and development. Welcoming addresses were made by Ms. Sasha Havlicek (Senior Director, Regional and Transfrontier Co-operation Programme, EastWest Institute), who also delivered a statement in support of the initiative on behalf of Dr. Erhart Busek, Special Co-ordinator of the Stability Pact for SEE, Mayor Haziri of Gjilan / Gnjilane, Mayor Halimi of Preševo, and Mr. Ivan Vejvoda (Director, Balkan Trust for Democracy), co-initiator of the Kumanovo Memorandum of Understanding.
 

Presentations by Mr. Dzevat Ademi (Macedonian Deputy Minister for Local Self-Government), Mr. Ibrahim Shara (Kosovo Adviser to the Prime Minister), Mrs. Kristian Leibling (Representative of the SRSG, UNMIK), Mr. Jesper Thomson (Political Adviser, Office of the EU Special Representative in Skopje), and Mr. Martin Brooks (South Serbia Co-ordinator, OSCE) emphasized support to the initiative on the part of central authorities and relevant international institutions.

Following lunch, the NGO Fair was publicly opened by Mayor Kovacevski. In the first such event of this scale, over 30 stalls were set up by local NGOs and community groups in the Kumanovo Community Centre, presenting projects and activities from a variety of organisations throughout the micro-region, and allowing the participants the chance to learn, and to make new contacts and exchange experiences with their peers from other towns and areas.

The afternoon session of the conference began with a panel presentation on civil/local government relations and opportunities for transfrontier project development. Chaired by Ms. Havlicek (EWI, Brussels), the panel’s speakers included: Mrs. Annelise Oeschger (Liaison Committee of INGOs with participatory status at the Council of Europe); the three appointed GPK municipal co-ordinators, Mrs. Elizabeta Cvetkovska (Kumanovo), Mr. Fadil Osmani (Gjilan/Gnjilane) and Mr. Mentor Nuhi (Preševo), who presented their experiences with the project so far and the opportunities for further civil–local government co-operation; Mr. Martin Hildebrants (UNDP Pristina); and, Mr. Blake A. Chrystal (Catholic Relief Services Skopje). Specific programmes relevant to promoting co-operation and development in the micro-region were presented, including grants programmes available to local organisations (CoE, EWI, Balkan Trust for Democracy, UNDP and CRS). The panel also agreed in principle to establish a ‘GPKT Project Council’ to foster communication and co-operation amongst the various agencies newly supporting transfrontier activities in the micro-region. The proposed GPKT Project Council would also ensure information exchange and co-operation with local authorities and GPKT Working Groups with the aim of avoiding duplication and ensuring a strategic approach to development in the area. The EastWest Institute agreed to take steps to co-ordinate the set-up of such a voluntary Project Council.

The conference continued the same day with a Workshop on ‘Education in the GPKT Micro-region’. The following day began with a second workshop on ‘Youth and Culture in the GPKT Micro-region’, followed by simultaneous workshops on ‘Women’s Rights and Gender Issues: Women’s Security and Economic Development’ and ‘Media in the Micro-region: Information Outreach to the Local Communities’.

The conference closed with a plenary session, co-chaired by Ms. Havlicek (EWI, Brussels) and Mr. Francois Friederich (Council of Europe), who facilitated the presentation of conclusions and next steps. The rapporteurs from the four workshops presented a summary of discussion and conclusions reached in each session, and both these conclusions, and the closing statements from the Mayors of Kumanovo, Gjilan / Gnjilane and Preševo underlined the strong support expressed throughout the conference for continued and increased co-operation across the micro-region, including support for the more active participation of the recently-included municipality in the micro-region, Trgovište.

The EastWest Institute and Council of Europe co-chairs made reciprocal commitments to continuing and building on the valuable transfrontier co-operation achievements to date, outlining the concrete activities that the EWI GPKT project team would be embarking on in the coming weeks and months, and closing with their expression of sincere thanks to the municipal hosts and participants for their support. The co-organisers furthermore noted the extraordinary enthusiasm and energy which characterized the NGO Forum and Workshops: overall, participants agreed that a remarkable degree of local will for productive collaboration was evident and that this signaled great potential for the GPKT initiative as a model for Balkan stabilization and development at the local level
 

IV. Working Group Conclusions

Education Working Group

Introducing the session, Mrs. Valbona Tahiri (EWI, Gjilan/Gnjilane), presented cross-border activities so far in the area of education in the micro-region, in particular reporting on the competition day held in Preševo in November 2003, in which 140 children from the micro-region participated. Ms. Havlicek, (EWI, Brussels) chaired the workshop, and Ms. Chrissie Hirst (EWI, Gjilan/Gnjilane) acted as rapporteur. The Working Group on Education is composed of school directors and teachers, members of parent-teacher associations, municipal education officials, etc. Around 20 members of the Working Group participated in the session, and comments and discussion were also taken from the substantial audience this workshop attracted.

The discussion was led to first identify common problems encountered across the micro-region. Various commonly identified challenges that schools and teachers face in the micro-region were discussed.
The general lack of resources in all municipalities in the micro-region was noted, including equipment (such as science laboratory equipment), textbooks, libraries, and fundamentally, sufficient classroom space and teaching staff. In particular, the specific issue of textbook-language resources was highlighted as a challenge, as in the Albanian majority schools in Southern Serbia, many grades of students are working from very poor translations of outdated Serbian curricula textbooks.
Participants also noted that the lack of amenities available, particularly in villages, including secondary schools, with the result that in certain cases students are forced to travel to urban centres for secondary schooling.
The need for pre-school education to be addressed and integrated into broader educational and social policy frameworks was raised.
The problems of higher education and career development opportunities were stressed by several participants, in particular the challenges of applications (and access) to universities, the need for equal status of applications, and of needs regarding the validation of educational qualifications.

Discussion around needs and opportunities for co-operation in the education sector, in particular in light of economic development and employment generation needs across the GPKT area, pointed to specific lines of action that participants urged to explore:
The need for ‘sharing’ languages in the micro-region as a means for the economic survival of new generations was raised as part of the debate around access to ‘own-language’ resources.
Sharing of educational resources more generally, as a means to cutting costs and providing better services to the citizens of GPKT, was raised. A specific suggestion came from the Kumanovo education officer for the development of a GPKT strategy, which would allow particular schools or areas within the micro-region to develop a competitive advantage in one area of education and ‘offer’ this to the citizens across GPKT. He noted that once the Ohrid decentralisation takes place, municipalities will be in a position to offer their schools’ services to other communities, even across the borders.
Further contacts of children of different communities across GPKT (following the Preševo ‘competition day’ example).
The establishment of a more formalised GPKT Education Committee, to be developed on the basis of the existing working group (with some expansion), to work on specific educational issues and to solidify communications and strategically lead the transfrontier education co-operation process

In general, all participants were strongly supportive of the GPKT initiative and the opportunities it presents for co-operation and exchange, and expressed their desire for continued and increased co-operation between all groups in the micro-region in the field of education. The proposed next step of establishing a GPKT Education Committee received particularly enthusiastic support from all participants.

EWI staff in Gjilan / Gnjilane have therefore committed to take the lead in following up on this proposal after the conference, and will be in touch with participants and Working Group members to take this forward.
 

Youth Working Group

The Youth Working Group session was co-chaired and facilitated by Mr. Owen Masters (Council of Europe) and Mr. Burim Leci (Kosovo Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport). Mrs. Aferdita Syla (Gjilan/Gnjilane Youth Centre) gave an overview of the activities of the EWI Youth Working Group to date and acted as a rapporteur.

One of the main points from the session was the strong support from participants for establishing an institutionalized form of co-operation between the youth of the micro-region, in order to both facilitate cross-border activities and to compensate to a certain extent for the lack of developed youth policies at national levels.

The formation of a GPKT Youth Council was seen as being the optimal mechanism for the implementation of various key activities. The following possible areas of engagement were identified:
empowerment of youth through capacity building,
training of trainers,
wider outreach training in mediation skills, changing mind-sets
joint advocacy vis-à-vis local and national governments on priority issues including ensuring better representation of youth in decision-making processes on relevant social issues.

Additional proposals included suggestions for concrete activities such as:
awareness-raising and public information campaigns against drug use and HIV/AIDS prevention,
the organisation of youth camps, festivals, fairs, exhibitions and other joint events (e.g. science and sport competitions).
increased networking between youth and education NGOs and educational institutions, which was highlighted as an important need, with the proposal that the Internet could be a possible means of facilitating this.

Participants also identified various challenges to progress in this direction, including:
the current lack of proper representation of rural youth, young women, and minority and disabled youth
the lack of equal opportunities in general
information sharing and awareness raising
poor infrastructure and border crossing barriers
funding for undertaking concrete activities.

In conclusion, participants agreed on the next step of working to establish a cross-border GPKT Youth Council. It was agreed that a meeting to clarify further organisational and participatory issues will be held within the framework of EWI’s Youth GPKT Working Group, and that all relevant NGO’s and youth groups will be invited to discuss taking forward the establishment of a youth council for the micro-region. The meeting will also look at finalising the composition of the council, and will discuss the suggestion made during the workshop to also establish a supporting Advisory Board.

Women’s Working Group

The Women’s Working Group session was chaired by Mrs. Vjollca Krasniqi, Ms. Sofie Dimitrovsija (AFEM - Co-ordination Francaise), and Mrs. Ferdeze Sulemane; Mrs. Tatjana Krstevska and Ms. Dimitrovsija acted as rapporteurs. The session followed up on discussions held at the preparatory meeting of the Working Group earlier in the month. The preparatory meeting in September was the first meeting of the recently-formed group, aimed at identifying key issues, and common issues, for women in the micro-region. During those preparatory discussions, the issue of women’s economic situation and their exclusion in the main from decision-making processes came clearly to the fore, and discussions during the Kumanovo session continued with an emphasis on these two themes.

Participants reiterated the common needs among women in the micro-region:
The need for better economic opportunities - the need for equal opportunities policies in the workplace, and, more fundamentally, the need to overcome cultural barriers in accessing available employment and economic resources in order to reverse the problem of the feminisation of poverty in the region.
The status of women in general was identified as an issue which impacted on many areas other than economic and employment opportunities, including domestic violence, the lack of women in decision-making, trafficking, and health care.
Overall, participants felt that there was a pressing need for awareness raising among both women and the community as a whole in the micro-region.

In terms of next steps, the lack of detailed information in various areas (a result of the low status given to women’s issues) was noted as a key concern, and participants therefore identified research as a necessary first step for further action. Three issue-groups were identified as key areas for research to target:
Women’s status in the community, including within the home and community, and their status vis-a-vis male partners and actors in the community.
Women’s status in terms of social policies / social development in the micro-region, including health-care provision needs and local decision-making on social issues.
Women’s status in economic terms, the challenges to improving this; specifically employment, business (and business start-up) and workplace challenges.

The proposed research would be conducted in order to investigate further and better understand the specific problems facing women in the micro-region. It was agreed that this would allow the development of appropriate and well-thought out activities to begin addressing these problems, which the Working Group could then take forward and implement. This approach was given overwhelming approval by participants, and it was agreed that follow-up activities would proceed on this basis.

In addition to research and the general need for awareness raising on women’s rights and equality within communities, two specific ideas for possible next step activities related to more targetted advocacy were also proposed during the discussion:
The suggestion to hold a meeting, or meetings, of women active in politics (in or from the micro-region), with the aim of raising the problems they face in their positions and professions, received substantial support during the discussions
The proposal to organise lobbying activities for the adoption of ‘gender budgets’ at the national levels also had strong support.
 

Media Working Group

Following the first EWI-facilitated meeting of the Media Working Group in June 2004, at which the representatives of ten TV stations from Gjilan/Gnjilane, Kumanovo and Preševo expressed their strong will for co-operation. The Group has continued to work towards generating practical results from cross-border media collaboration, including the formulation of a media strategy for the micro-region. This second Media Working Group meeting, held as a session within the Kumanovo conference, aimed at strengthening the relationships between the television stations involved, identifying particular modes for cross-border co-operation in the GPKT area and strategizing. Chaired by Mr. Vladimir Pandurov (EWI, Niš), with Ms. Nazmie Kamberi (TV HANA, Kumanovo) acting as rapporteur, the session benefited from a keynote speech from Mr. Saso Ordanovski (FORUM), which helpfully framed the GPKT media co-operation project within the broader perspective of current SEE media developments.

The session began with the presentation of already implemented inter-ethnic projects on co-operation between TV stations, including the joint multilingual programme ‘Macedonia on Palm’ (‘Makedonija na dlanka’). Following the keynote speech, a lively discussion resulted in several ideas for practical cross-border co-operation, including:
the production of documentaries, thematic programmes on common problems in the micro-region municipalities, and an introductory reportage on the municipalities
the use and/or exchange of equipment, journalists and technicians between stations in the micro-region
close co-operation with the municipal co-ordinators for the GPKT micro-region to directly engage municipal support for media co-operation.

In general, participants were enthusiastic and positive towards further co-operation, which was seen both as bringing practical benefits to the television stations and their programmes and as being crucial for the deconstruction of stereotypes, and thus assisting other more generalised forms of co-operation across the micro-region.

It was therefore agreed that as the first next step, a joint GPKT editorial board should be established to manage joint programming. The joint editorial board proposed would also act as a co-ordinating mechanism for the various micro-region media co-operation activities put forward by participants.

It was agreed that these proposals will be expanded in more detail and concretised at the next consultation meeting of the Working Group, which it was agreed should be organised by EWI and held in Preševo on the 15th October.
 

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