This past September I returned to Croatia after an absence of a year and a half. Any hopes I had of Croatia’s fortunes changing after it was admitted to the European Union (EU) last year were quickly dashed. Flying from Zagreb to Sarajevo, I could see the rivers overflowing the flood plains. Since May, Croatia and its neighbors, Bosnia and Serbia, have been inundated by almost nonstop rain--the heaviest rainfall in the past 120 years.
The flooding and landslides have caused billions of dollars in damages, with hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes and businesses. The flooding exacerbated the region’s already high unemployment rate: Croatia 17%, Serbia 20% and Bosnia 44%. The rate for youth 25 and under is even higher, ranging from 52% in Croatia to 60% in Bosnia. These economies have never bounced back from the devastating wars in the 1990s. Natural disasters expose in their grinding destructiveness the weakness of institutions, the ineffectiveness of government, and all too often the indifferent and shortsightedness of politicians and technocrats.
But they also exposed solidarity among ordinary citizens over politically induced administrative and ethnic boundaries. Many Heart & Hand grantees led fund relief efforts and Heart & Hand made a significant contribution to the work in Bosnia. The reports I heard from Heart & Hand grantees were equally grim. Funders like the Global Fund for Women and European women’s funds no longer make the generous grants in the Balkans that they had in the past. As a result, many of our grantees have had to cut the size of their staffs and the hours employees work. Despite its reduced funding, The Centre for Women’s Studies in Zagreb held its annual post-graduate course in Dubrovnik this past summer, attracting participants from 20 countries, including Iran and Iraq. KONTRA, a lesbian group in Zagreb, lost all of its funding, but it still has the office space donated by the city.
Amazingly, with a skeleton staff of two, it continues to consult to groups on gay rights. I heard so many sad stories from women who, even though their salaries were cut, are now the sole support of families in which the others have all lost their jobs.
As a counter to all of the wrenching news from Croatia and Bosnia, I was heartened by my encounters with young women on this trip who were so eager to learn about feminist history in their regions and in the wider world. I believe that information is power, and I am optimistic that these young that these young women will run with what they learn.
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