Beyond 2008 Regional Consultation for Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Beyond 2008 – A Global NGO Forum on the Review of the United Nations General Assembly
Special Session on Illicit Drugs 1998/2008

The Regional Consultation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

East and Southeast Europe and Central Asia

The countries included in this region are: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russian Federation, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.

 Regional Lead Organisations

Anti-Drug Association (Serbia) represented by Bojan Illic, President

Central and Eastern Europe Harm Reduction Network, represented by Dato Otiashvili and Raminta Stuikyte

European Cities Against Drugs, represented by Tomas Hallberg, Director

Designated NGO Committees Representative

David Turner of the Centro Italiano di Solidarietà, Rome, Italy

It was decided to hold two subregional consultations, one in Kiev (Ukraine) where the language
of the consultation would be Russian and one in Belgrade (Serbia) where the language of the consultation would be English.

Participants, Kiev, September 2007

The Regional Lead Organisations initially met in Vienna in March 2007 at a briefing and planning session for the RLOs from the six regions being financially supported through the project.   It was at this meeting that they agreed on the two sub-regional consultations and the provisional dates for the meetings in Kiev and Belgrade.

Kiev was the first sub-regional consultation and was held from the 12 – 14 September, 2007 in the Hotel Bratislava, Kiev.  To identify possible participants an application form was developed by the RLOs.  This was widely distributed using the networks of the RLOs as well as lists of organisations provided by UNODC HQ and its country offices.

It was a lively and thoughtful event with representatives from across the region and organizations with a wide range of approaches taking part.  The report from this sub-regional consultation has now been prepared, it will be combined with the report from the Belgrade meeting to form a single report for the region in due course.

The second sub-regional consultation was held from the 18 – 20 November, 2007 in the Best Western Hotel M, Belgrade, Serbia.  As for the Kiev consultation, applications to participate were invited from a wide range of organisations.  The response was lower than hoped, perhaps reflecting both the limited number of NGOs active in the drugs field in this part of the region but also the lack of knowledge about the actual and potential interaction between international, national and local responses to drug related problems.  The final participant list was:

* Only able to attend for a part of the consultation  ** Unable to attend due to illness

As in Kiev, discussion was full and explored the specific questions presented at the consultation in great detail.  It rapidly became clear that there were considerable differences between the experiences of the East European and Central Asia NGOs who met in Kiev and the Southeast Europe NGOs who met in Belgrade.  Nevertheless, there were also areas in common, especially in relation to the limited or non-engagement of NGOs in developing policy and strategy as partners with government, although NGOs were a major provider of interventions.  It was also clear that significant areas of work were dependent upon the provision of resources from international organisations and that there were serious problems for long term sustainability of work to tackle drug and drug related problems.

The report from this consultation is now being prepared and will be published on this web site when available.