General Update

Today, I am wishing I spoke Macedonian better. Our office is meeting with the leading women NGOs to discuss the DV projects we've been working on all month and I can't participate because I don't understand Macedonian enough to follow the conversation. It's alright I suppose. I am sure I will be fully informed after the meeting is over. Even if I were better at Macedonian, this would be hard to follow because the words used are not every day words, for the most part.

I get a 3 day weekend due to Monday being Macedonian Independence Day! So far, my weekend looks like it will be quiet. Tomorrow, I am showing the American from Colorado around in the morning and Sunday afternoon, I am off to Damjanka's for lunch. She's my landlady and I am hoping she is teaching me how to cook again :)

Speaking of cooking, I managed to make a fairly delicious pasta/sausage dish the other night. The only potential problem is I worry it made me smell like oh onion and garlic. Thank God I did not go out last night. Maybe the smell came from outside, but dear God, if it was from me, oh me oh my oh! So, I ate more for lunch today. We'll see if I smell later tonight. I am not hopeful. Sometimes not having much of a social life is a bonus.

Remember when I told you about the new alcohol law and I was wondering if it would actually be enforced? Well, the bodega near me no longer carries alcohol. Remember how I said this wouldn't effect my lifestyle too much? It won't, really. I liked being able to buy a can of beer on my way home, instead of lugging it a kilometer from near work, but I think I'll be able to manage. So, a law that is actually implemented...if only we could do it with gender equality legislation.

Domestic Violence in Macedonia

Hello! It has been a while since I gave you a proper update about what I am studying/learning so here it goes. Last week in Stip, the UN Human Rights Gender Theme Group (HRGTG) of Macedonia went to meet with the leaders of the municipality, NGOs and other interested parties to discuss domestic violence in their community. According to the department of Social Work (one of the government institutions), there were 8 cases of domestic violence (DV) reported. Eight. For the whole municipality. An NGO said they had seen something like 157 cases of DV. Over 50 of those were repeats - at least 3 times. Stip has close to 47,000 residents. As you can see, DV is grossly under reported. There was a big discussion as to why there was such a number discrepancy and that highlighted the lack of good data. There were many things discussed and I wanted to give you my reactions to the information provided. I believe the discussion was successful because I don't think all of these people from the Mayor to the Commission on Gender Equality to the other government institutions to the NGOs had ever been in the same room together to discuss issues surrounding domestic violence in their community. The Mayor did an excellent job summing up the discussion and suggested sending a team to Western Countries to learn from their experience. He realizes that they do not have to re-invent the wheel in Stip! So, who knows what will come from our discussion, but if they ask me who to visit, I know who I would suggest - Victim Outreach Information (VOI) in Colorado where I was a volunteer victim advocate. I feel silly even admitting this, but I realized how far we have come in the States in terms of domestic violence. We have shelters, laws specifically categorized as domestic violence, victim advocates (whoop whoop!), restraining orders, etc. Sure, we still have things to work on, but my goodness. The Ministry of the Interior (that's right, the Macedonian FEDERAL Government) determines if the DV case is severe enough to warrant sheltering the victim. Can you imagine how long this takes?! That is because the government provides the shelter. I could go into a whole other post to explain NGO involvement in Macedonia and I will, but not right now. I am sticking to the topic! So, long story short, my eyes were opened in Stip. If you are interested in reading our official minutes (taken by yours truly), let me know. I think I can share them with you. They are just over 2 pages. Brief.

Today, we had a presentation of some research we funded surrounding how much DV costs Macedonia, in economic terms. This presentation was tremendously successful. The panel consisted of Audur (my supervisor), Dominika (my co-worker who specializes in Gender Responsive Budgeting), the researcher and an Official from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. The audience had over 50 people present (even some men showed up!), one of which was the Ambassador from the Netherlands. Only recently has DV been discussed in Macedonia and I think having some ridiculously high financial costs, which are on the conservative side, shows people, in a logical way, why we need to deal with the issue of DV. There is an arguement that DV is a family matter, a private matter and this study shows that indeed this issue is of public concern. While this study was very preliminary (the researcher did a great job, considering the data issues), it starts a discussion. Afterall, in the end, unfortunately, what people mostly care about is the bottom line and this presentation shows how much DV takes away from the bottom line. Hundreds of thousands of Euros, even at the underreported level present in Macedonia. If the estimated number of victims came forward for services, we are in the hundreds of millions of Euros. Nevermind the human rights side of the argument. That is for a different post :)