INTERVIEW

Jasmina Dimishkovska – Rajkovska, president of “The Open Gate” – La strada



More and more Macedonian women are victims of trafficking

Some evaluations imply that every year in Europe about 500.000 girls and women are victims of human trafficking and they most often end up as sexual slaves. At the beginning of the ‘90s Macedonia was a country where victims of human trafficking transited and later it became a country that is a final destination for victims and recently a country where girls and women who are victims of human trafficking come from. The existence of civil society organizations that fight for women’s rights, protection and support of victims of violence and human trafficking is an imperative in Macedonia. The civil society organization “Open Gate” in its five-year operation has directed its activity towards discovering human trafficking, raising public awareness of the problem’s existence and within this organization the SOS line for helping victims of human trafficking has been working for three years.

What is the mission of the civil society organization “Open Gate”?
Open Gate’s mission is to fight for women’s rights and protect and support victims of violence and human trafficking. The civil society organization “Open Gate” has existed since 2000, when it officially started with its activities as “Women’s lobby and action against violence and women trafficking”. Constant increase of the number of women victims of human trafficking was the basic motive to establish the organization. Today there are 23 women working in the organization and they are specialized to work in different fields that treat the problem of human trafficking. 

The program “La strada” has been implemented within “Open Gate” since 2001…  
Yes, it has. The program “La strada” is a program for prevention against women trafficking in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe where nine countries are members – Holland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. For successful realization of its program, “Open Gate” operates on three segments: informing and lobbying, prevention and education, and social assistance.
The activities of “La Strada” are well-known and it was proved by the MTV Europe “Free your mind” award in 2004, given to “La Strada” for extraordinary contribution in fight against women trafficking in Europe.

For the past five years “Open Gate” has had successful campaigns and projects. Which of these activities would you point out as particularly significant?
The SOS-line for help of victims of human trafficking is one of our most significant projects. 794 calls have been registered on the free line 0 800 11111 or (00389) 02/2777070 for the past three years of our existence. The calls have been of various type. 483 informative, 69 missing, 24 victims at the moment, 26 survived, 106 girls and women directed to suitable institutions and 86 calls in the category “other”. Data show that the number of calls has rapidly increased since 2002. The SOS-line is open 12 hours, every day from 8 to 20 and there are nine trained operators responsible for help.

The operators give psycho-social assistance, information about safe leaving or work abroad (but the SOS-line does not provide a job abroad) etc. They can help with basic legal advice as well as information and assistance for the client in trouble and help in establishing contacts with appropriate relevant institutions. The SOS-line is financially supported by UNICEF, OSCE and Macedonian Telecommunications.

Many people are not aware that around us there is human trafficking and it is not excluded that they can become victims, too. Campaigns for raising public awareness are of extraordinary importance. What have you done in that direction?
In December last year “Open Gate” started implementing the project “Fight against human trafficking in Macedonia” in duration of one year, financially supported by the Catholic Relief Services. The aim of the project is to raise public awareness in terms of human trafficking, as well as to provide direct support of supposed and identified victims. The project consists of three campaigns, two on a local and one on a national level, realized in cooperation with all civil society organizations that are part of the informal network of the NGO Anti-trafficking partners. Within the campaigns there have been media presentations, tribunes have been organized, educational-preventive lectures, workshops and educative material has been given out. The national campaign took place in June this year and its implementation implied placing billboards in ten towns in the country, at border crossings, in coffee bars and other busy places. An educative film was made and shown on a few domestic television programs for the purposes of this project. 

“Open Gate” continues expanding its cooperation with other civil society organizations…
That is right. In 2003 our organization started implementing the projects “Non-governmental organizations network and joint implementation of a campaign for raising public awareness of human trafficking”. The project was financially supported by USAID through the Institute for sustainable communities. The aim of this project was to provide more efficient prevention and transfer of knowledge and experience of “Open Gate” from the field of human trafficking to other civil society organizations in Macedonia. The implementation of this project gave some significant results. Ten civil society organizations have been trained to work on prevention human trafficking, an educative manual has been published, 33 preventive lectures have been implemented in 11 towns and rural environments. One of the most significant achievements of this project certainly is the fact that 600 people have been trained to recognize human trafficking and to prevent it. They were of different age and ethnicity.

Out of the total number of educated people, 75 percent were at the age between 14 and 20 and 19 percent over 25. 6% were representatives of civil society organizations. Rounding off the project was marked in November last year by officially publishing the web site of the informal network of NGO “Anti-trafficking Partners”.

 

How is “Open Gate” involved in the violence against women world campaign?
On 27 March 2003 “Open Gate” and “Shelter-center for domestic violence” organized a charity auction, thus marking the women day against violence “W-day.”

The main reason for marking the World day on violence against women is raising public awareness in Macedonia of the problem’s existence, lobbying in public institutions, ministries and the media to support this initiative, as well as introducing the public with the work of civil society organizations that fight against violence on women.

Public’s awareness should certainly be raised, too, that help needs to be provided in raising funds that will be used for support of supposed and identified victims of violence and human trafficking.