Donor: Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA)
Duration of the project: September 1999 – September 2000
In the municipality of Kraljevo, inhabited by 123,000 people, the overall situation was extremely difficult in 1999, due to economic collapse and the significant decrease of municipal financial funds. According to the Municipal Commissioner for Refugees, there were officially 20,000 refugees and displaced persons in the territory of the Kraljevo municipality, and 30,000 unofficially, which made about 25% of the entire municipality’s population and the highest percentage in Serbia. Of 17,000 displaced persons from Kosovo, registered with the Municipal Commissioner for Refugees, 15,000 have been accommodated by private means (in rented apartments, with relatives, etc.). About 980 (200 children) were placed in 11 collective centres. Living conditions in the centres were extremely difficult due to the lack of toilettes, water, heating, beds, mattresses, blankets, winter clothing, personal hygiene items, medicines, and proper nutrition, with only one hot meal a day being provided. However, the number of applications for this kind of accommodation was increasing, indicating the exhaustion of private funds for rent and food. Having been out of use for over a decade, some of the buildings were below any human standards, with broken windows and ruined walls so damp that fungi and mushrooms were growing on them. There were over 100 school children in the collective centres. They lack school books and other material. Not all of them were allowed to attend the nearest school, thus having to travel from a village to the city. They were not allowed to ride on a bus since they could not pay fare. This dramatic situation did not provoke reactions from the state authority.
Even though the Centre was established with the goal of educating citizens about human rights and raising their awareness of these rights, circumstances have led its members and associates to join humanitarian activities and aid the neglected and forgotten. Its associates in Belgrade, Kraljevo, Uzice and Nis take part in campaigns to help refugees and displaced persons in Serbia, from providing free legal assistance to distributing food, clothing, shoes and other essentials.
This was humanitarian action initiated by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and Kraljevo Office of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights. Thanks to the Norvegian People’s Aid almost one year Belgrade Centre distributed humanitarian aid to the internally displaced persons in 11 Collective Centers in the Municipality of Kraljevo. The Centre has provided food and clothes from November 1999 until August 2000. The project comprised purchase and distribution of winter clothing, heating facilities, school material, and purchase and distribution of monthly supplies of food, baby diapers, milk and food, woods in the period of ten months.
Thanks to the Belgrade office of the Norwegian People’s Aid and individual donors, the Centre has bought clothes for 29 unaccompanied children who have found shelter in a church in Prizren. The Centre also uses its modest funds to try to improve the situation of a group of refugees and IDPs from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo accommodated at a recreation centre on mountain Tara and of several groups of Roma in settlements near Belgrade.
