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neighbourhood
Friday, Feb. 6 - Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009
Briefs Albania Struggles To Curb Illegal Migration Headscarved Pupil Pushes Limits In Macedonia
Despite improved border policing, Albanians continue to risk their lives to go abroad in order to pursue dreams of a better life in the EU.
The case of a teenage girl who wants to wear her headscarf to school is creating waves in Macedonia, with education authorities, local officials and teachers locked in a tug-of-war over religous freedom and the right to education. The girl, who attends a high school in the western Macedonian town of Tetovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian area, wanted to wear her head scarf over her school uniform. After several warnings, the headmaster Ljatif Ismaili banned her from class until she removes the headscarf during school hours.
Bosnia Recession Brings Mass Job Losses More than 6,500 people have lost their jobs in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last two months alone because of the worsening economic crisis in the country and abroad, local media reported recently.
World Bank Halts Controversial Albania Project The World Bank has announced the suspension of a loan from the International Development Association for a project that while meaning to safeguard Albania’s coast was found to have been used to demolish parts of a village and leave many families homeless. An internal IDA report, obtained by Balkan Insight, shows that a World Bank project on coastal zones management in southern Albania, aided the demolition of informal settlements in the village of Jale, in disregard to the bank’s policies of forced displacement.
Kosovo Suicide Rate On Rise Due To Depression Sociologists are ringing warning bells over the alarming rise in suicides and suicide attempts in Kosovo, after three people tried to kill themselves over the weekend. Kosovo lacks comprehensive nationwide suicide statistics, but local authorities in Pristina reported 15 suicides and 57 suicide attempts in the capital region alone in 2008.
Bulgarian Farmers Block Four Border Crossings Farmers from northern and southern Bulgaria staged new protests on February 4th. The main demand of the protest near Stara Zagora is for the Agriculture Ministry to finally update the cattle owners registry, which is used to identify the recipients and size of cattle farming subsidies.
Photo courtesy of the Albanian Defence Ministry
Albanian coast guards are engaged in a seemingly never-ending battle with people smugglers operating along the country’s coastline.
By Blerina Moka Reporting from Tirana
T
here is little chance that three-year-olds Andueneta and Klarisa understood the danger they faced as a snow storm blocked them and their mothers in the mountains of Southern Albania on December 16th. They were part of a group of 15 Albanians migrants attempting to cross the border illegally into Greece. An SOS sent from a cell phone to a local TV station alarmed the authorities of both countries who then launched a rescue operation, saving the migrants who had been stuck for more than 20 hours in the snow in temperatures well below freezing. The two girls and the 13 others can count themselves lucky. Three months previously, five would-be emigrants drowned in an accident in Lake Butrint, including a 22-yearold mother and her three-month-old baby. People smuggling has been rampant in Albania for more than two decades. Tens of thousands of migrants have been smuggled on speedboats from Albania across the Adriatic to Italy or across the mountains into Greece.
As an endless series of tragedies continues, debate rages over whether tougher policing of the borders will be enough to dam the stream of Albanians ready to risk their lives to escape a dire economic situation. An estimated 35 per cent of Albania’s population has emigrated since the Stalinist regime fell in 1991. Greece is estimated to host more 570,000 Albanian migrants and Italy, more than 270,000, the bulk of whom crossed these countries’ borders illegally. Remittances from migrants are a lifeline for Albania’s struggling economy, amounting to €947 million in 2007. Under pressure from the EU, however, Albania has banned speedboats on the Adriatic for the last three years to thwart the illegal smugglers. “The moratorium [on speedboats] needs to be extended because the border police are not yet equipped with the means to stop trafficking along the coast,” the Interior Minister, Bujar Nishani, said in October. The ban affected around 2,000 local speedboat owners and was intended to stop traffickers in both people and drugs from using their craft to reach the shores of Italy and Greece. The only small motorised vessels allowed to venture out into the sea from Albanian shores are police,
customs and fishing boats as well as foreign-owned yachts. Critics say the law is unnecessary and has hurt Albania’s tourism industry, creating more unemployment and subsequently more potential migrants. Nertian Ceka, deputy speaker of Albania’s parliament, says the measure is not curbing illegal migration but is only aggravating the troubles of an industry vital to Albania’s prosperity. The ban meanwhile discriminates between Albanian and foreign citizens.
Police also note that the moratorium has not completely solved the problem at sea while it has increased migratory pressures on the land border with Greece. “Traffickers coming from the border areas know the mountain passes on the borders very well, which makes it very difficult to police them,” Pullumb Nako, head of Albania’s border police, said. In 2008, Greek authorities stopped more than 11,000 illegal migrants on the border. Seasonal employment agreements between Albania and neighbouring countries have also failed to dent the number of illegal migrants because they often have functioned poorly. Many of those who have migrated temporarily using these agreements have sought to stay permanently in the host country, which makes the agreements difficult to renew. Experts warn that despite greater efforts from Tirana to strengthen its borders, illegal migration will continue as long as there are such high levels of unemployment and poverty in the country. Albania was the last country in Eastern Europe to emerge from Communism and even by the low standards of its former socialist neighbours, its economy was in tatters by the early 1990s, largely thanks to the regime’s isolationism. Despite recent economic growth averaging 5 per cent of GDP per year, chronic unemployment and under-development have kept poverty the norm, particularly in rural areas, home to 57 per cent of the population. The IMF estimates that almost 25 per cent of people live on less than 2 US dollars a day. According to the head of Albanian Institute of Statistics, Ines Nurja, unemployment remains high especially among young people under 30. This demographic group is the core market of the traffickers. For many of these jobless youngsters, the prospect of a dangerous, arduous passage abroad is a risk they are willing to take. “When you don’t have a job and can’t feed your family, illegal migration is the only way out,” said Blerta a young woman from Tirana in her twenties who has decided to risk the voyage across the mountains into Greece. “I see migration as the only way out of poverty,” she added. Source: www.BalkanInsight.com