In hotel Merkur in Tetovo, the regular meeting of the Center for the Development of the Polog Planning Region was held, which was attended by all the mayors from the municipalities in this region. At the request of the partner organization CORTEX from Tetovo, the issue of ensuring sustainability of the Tetovo Women’s Support Center was one of the items on the agenda of this meeting.
The president of CORTEX, Sema Halili, and the executive director of the National Network, Elena Dimushevska, addressed shortly. They shared the findings and recommendations from the conducted “Analysis of the situation with accessible and available specialized services for help and support of women and children victims of gender-based and domestic violence in the Polog planning region”, as well as the services offered by the Women’s Center in Tetovo together with the number of women and children who asked for help. The financial framework for ensuring sustainability of the center was presented to the mayors, through a participatory approach in which all municipalities from the Polog region should be involved. In the discussion that followed, it was also mentioned the local self-government’s role in accordance with the Law on prevention and protection against violence against women and domestic violence.
The main conclusion of this meeting was that although the municipalities want to work on improving social services and strengthening the system of protection of women and children victims of domestic violence, the unfinished process of decentralization limits them in the allocation of financial resources. In addition, the current situation with the budgets of all municipalities in this region, which have debts and blocked accounts, was also emphasized, which complicates the regular functioning of the municipalities. As future steps, it was agreed to review the proposed financial frameworks for participation of all municipalities, which would be discussed at the next regional coordination meeting of the mayors.
