Tackling discrimination in South East Europe




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Tackling discrimination in South East Europe

Help Age International

15 January 2004

Photo: Older women chatting at kitchen table ©Catherine Hine/HelpAge International

A representative from a project partner organisation, the Association for Social Assistance in Bulgaria , consults older people in their local communities

A new HelpAge International office will open in February 2004 in Ljubljana , Slovenia to co-ordinate a four-year project covering the whole of South East Europe.

With finance from the Community Fund (UK), the South East European project aims to empower older people to tackle age discrimination across the region. It will also encourage local NGOs to support older people in this process. The countries covered are Albania , Bosnia-Herzogovina , Bulgaria , Croatia , Macedonia , Moldova , Romania , Serbia and Slovenia .

In the first year, the focus will be on building the capacity of partner NGOs to work with older people, and raising awareness of the problems of ageing in rapidly changing societies. In the second year, participatory research will be used to find out how older people identify their key problems and the changes they want to see.

Developing a network

Throughout the project, a network of NGOs will be developed that work with and for older people, along the lines of the East and Central European Network (ECEN) established by HelpAge International in the 1990s (see Global network: East and Central Europe).

At a planning conference for the new project, held in Ljubljana in December 2003, the ECEN’s former co-ordinator, Nijole Arbaciauskiene, recounted the network’s experience in sharing learning between member organisations, and developing ways for NGOs to hold governments to account on their policies towards older people.

Older people lose out

South East Europe includes the poorest countries in Europe ( Albania and Moldova ) and countries recovering from war. In the conflict-torn areas of the Balkans, older people who have been forced to move from one country to another frequently lose access to their pensions.

The collapse of the Eastern Bloc economic and political systems and the ‘shock therapy’ of the 1990s have hit older people hardest. Many older people do not have access to adequate health services, or a basic income to cover essential bills and the cost of medicines. At the same time, the value of pensions has shrunk with inflation. (Download a copy of HelpAge International's report, A generation in transition: Older people's situation and civil society's response in East and Central Europe from Publications)