The reintegration and rehabilitation of women victims of violence is an essential segment of the system dealing with violence, providing long-term solutions for autonomous life without violence. It is also integrated into the Law on Prevention and Protection from Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, with a special focus on the development and adoption of a national reintegration program in Article 99.
Although the Ministry of Social Policy, Demography and Youth in 2024 adopted such a program, the document focuses on existing resources, which are not sufficient to provide full support. The program in its final draft form was prepared with the expertise of the National Network at the end of 2022. in which five pillars of reintegration were defined, with an emphasis on long-term housing and specially designed employment measures. However, these key services and measures were not integrated into the adopted program, which did not allow their financing as social services, and excluded the possibility for civil society organizations to manage such services in accordance with the laws. All this ultimately results in inadequate support for victims and the inability to achieve the goal – autonomous life without violence.
Since 2019, the National Network has been actively working on affirming reintegration as a process, with special support from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) in the period 2020-2022. Intensive work was carried out on evidence-based research with recommendations at local and national levels, education of centers for social work and advocacy with multiple stakeholders at national and local levels. In the second phase of the project, which will be implemented over the next 3 years, the focus will be on improving the national reintegration program, as well as improving the licensing process of CSOs as service providers, especially the inclusion of reintegration services in the Law on Social Protection and their further financing.
In February, the first coordination meeting of the partner organizations from the informal network of the Western Balkans implementing this project was held in Tivat (Montenegro). The meeting discussed in more detail the next steps to be taken at the national and regional levels. All 7 organizations are working on institutionalizing quality services for the reintegration of victims of gender-based and domestic violence, where positive practices from the Balkan countries are shared and joint efforts are used at the regional level to change the situation in order to enable better protection of victims of violence as well as an autonomous life without violence. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Gender Alliance Development Center (GADC) as the project leader, as well as the Albanian Women’s Empowerment Network (AWEN), the United Women Foundation (FUW), the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN), the Women’s Rights Center (WRC) and the Autonomous Women’s Center (AWC).
