Winner of 1998 European Union and United States of America «Civil Society Award»

1 - Repatriation and Reintegration of Refugees in Areas of Special State Concern

SDF has realized its biggest projects during the year 2003 within its 18 legal advising officers in Croatia. SDF has helped refugees and others low income individuals (18.274 clients or 21.952 different legal cases). Expert lawyers have represented clients before court in the legally more complex cases (146 cases), while an established network of activists in the field provided information or monitored the return process.

SDF has organized help to the returnees, persons in cross-border visits, and refugees. SDF has acquired personal documents with a beneficiary authorization letter, paid administrative fees when acquiring citizenship, permanent residency, land registry papers, land ownership titles, and additional reconstruction request papers etc. (2.079 cases for 1.373 clients).

In order to help the return of the refugees, SDF has been collecting the host statements (49 papers collected) and forwarding them to the Office for Refugees to accommodate potential returnees as soon as possible. Also, we organized regular visits to the refugee collective centers in Strmica near Knin, Tehnika in Sisak, Topolik in Lipik to help the organized return of the refugees.

In other to speed up the processing of reconstruction applications and the reconstruction, in cooperation with and for the Ministry of Public Works and Reconstruction and its local offices, SDF has organized and directed official papers delivery to the house reconstruction applicants, helped them with additional papers submission, found contact phones and addresses (11.324 letters were forwarded to the house reconstruction applicants; 1.804 new users addresses were found; 1.454 field cases were assisted in completing reconstruction applications; 629 signatures for house reconstruction instructions were collected; 1.064 beneficiaries were contacted in person or over phone for additional paper requests).

2 - Triangle Repatriation Project

Within this project in Western Slavonia permanent legal counseling has been organized for the returnees, needy individuals, and participants in cross-border visits (170 legal assistance beneficiaries). People were also helped to acquire personal documents, court representation and other administrative fees (304 users, 455 court and other administrative fees and acquired documents).

During this project SDF legal counselor had two informative visits to the refugees and displaced people in collective centers in S/MN. At the time he held two panel discussions and 18 informative meetings with 700 displaced people from Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A public meeting for Croatian refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina was organized in refugees camp Lipovljani with legal counselors from NGO Banja Luka and Tuzla.

3 - Comprehensive Advocacy Strategy for the Rights of Refugees and DPs

Members of the Legal Issues Group within South-East Europe for Refugee Assistance Network (SEE-RAN) and Balkan Human Rights Network (BHRN) have started this cooperation project in year 2000. SDF is coordinating Croatian part of the project; other network participants are Croatian Helsinki Committee, Civic Committee for Human Rights and Dalmatian Solidarity Committee.

The project main objectives:

Assuring that refugees, displaced people, asylum seekers and minorities rights meet international standards in the national legal system accordingly, and advocating necessary legal reforms in order to fulfill those required standards;

Monitoring law implementation to ensure equal legal rights of all citizen and legality of the system;

Coordinating legal rights in the newly independent countries, especially citizens legal rights obtained before 1990, before the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

Croatian legislative system in the period 1990 – 2000 certainly significantly influenced refugee issues. Based of an analysis of that period done in the previous phases of this project, we carried out the following actions:

Updated 2001 legal analysis according to the laws and policies introduced after that year (property rights, rights of former tenancy right holders, reconstruction rights, retirement, social and health care rights);

Prepared comprehensive material on the actual refugees and returnees legal status;

Organized three round tables (tenancy rights, pension arrears, health insurance and social welfare);

Contacted the Government officials to have them speed up refugee rights issues, and motivated media coverage to spread publicity on the theme of refugees and especially their personal stories.

Within the project National coordinators from the Group for Legal Issues and Coordination Committee SEE-Ran have met several times to work on Program document FRESTA or 2004, and Strategic plan for Group for Legal Issues till 2007.

4 - Somebody's Land – The TV Serial

A while ago we realized The Croatian TV program scheme hadn't had any show on refugees, their return and reconciliation back to their homeland. In this rather confusing and somehow chaotic situation, would be smart and useful to offer some basic information about where we stand with property repossession, what is the security factor like, and what is the life like now in those areas that used to be «somebody's homeland». Along the line might be even more important to wake up general public to reopen for the coexistence in the post war situation, especially in the Areas of Special State Concern.

The initial idea was to give equal coverage of refugee's problems in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, so all ethnic groups would equally benefit from those information. Yet, due to practical reasons Bosnia and Serbia coverage have shrunk down. Also, at the beginning we had an idea to have three 50 min. Informative shows. But right after the shooting had begun The Croatian TV had decided to give us 30 min documentary shows, instead. We have shown a great flexibility adjusting along the line and shuffling our concepts as needed. We shot material enough for five shows, but by the end we faces the situation that some parts were already outdated. All in all, we finalized four shows and the remaining material from the fifth one has been used to replace some outdated parts.

The serial shows a wide refugee return territory with separate coverage of: Donji Lapac, Pakrac and surrounding area, Vukovar, Knin and surrounding area, Ravni Kotari in Zadar background, Baranja, Udbina, Banja Luka, Petrinja, Karlovac, Krnjak. There are two parts from refugee centers in Serbia: Krnjaca near Belgrade and Temerin, and stories about public persons who were refugees themselves: Miljenko Jergović, writer, Edo Maajka, singer; Marijan Beneš, boxer. A special space is devoted to a woman athlete Vera Nikolić who was the top athlete in Croatia at the seventies and funnily enough had to leave Croatia at the beginning of the nineties.

The guiding criterion was to give equal coverage to all ethnic groups and balanced information with neither a false optimism nor useless criticism.

The material got green light from Croatian consulting team as it met all required professional and technical standards, and also didn't invoke racial, religious, or any other intolerance. What’s more its quality soars above the average TV offering.

TV presentation unfortunately happened with five-month delay. It finally went on air on March 26-29,2004. SDF is working out an agreement with independent TV stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Monte Negro to re-broadcast Somebody's Land, there are plans to continue the production in 2004.

5 - Identification of Beneficiaries and Coordination of Return

The project has covered the whole territory of Croatia. Its main goal has been to increase the number of returnees from out of Croatia back to the Areas of Special State Concern through the following means:

Help to the County Offices for Reconstruction
Help preselect potential returnees who live out of Croatia and have shown a desire to return back to Croatia
Informing preselected potential returnees based on Ministry of Public Works and Reconstruction data base
Logistic assistance to the potential returnees in all steps paper work regarding their return requests
Help potential returnees in accommodation and private property reconstruction.

The main goal of the project has been assisting County Offices for Reconstruction and Ministry for Reconstruction and Development in communication with potential returnees-users: locating users, handing in the documents regarding reconstruction requests, legal help in the documents completion.

The major interactions have place across the border, namely, contacting and connecting refugees in Serbia, Monte Negro, Bosnia and Herzegovina (potential reconstruction users) with Croatian officials. Certain number of especially complex cases (mostly property rights) was offered legal help (attorney at the court).

SDF has offered paper work help in the reconstruction requests in 4 289 cases. The help has been requested in 2 917 cases through the project itself. There is still work in progress on the previously collected cases.

6 - Provision of Legal Aid to Vulnerable Groups

The project has been initiated to offer a fee of charge legal provision in the area poorly covered with this kind of help. It covers districts Kistanje, Skradin and Ervenik. Its implementation saves the inhabitants long trips to bigger centers – Knin and Benkovac.

For that purpose in Kistanje an office space has been rented and equipped and has had regular daily working hours. In the year 2003 the office has served 548 clients with various legal concerns, mostly regarding their retirement and disability rights, property reconstruction and temporary occupied property return. Kistanje town area has dealt with the biggest problem as far as property returns goes, only 30 out 120 temporary occupied houses have been returned so far.

This project has shown significant results in helping the above mentioned and many other acute problems, especially property returns and reconstructions. In the coming period we expect this kind of free of charge legal office will justify its purpose as its help is necessary to the local inhabitants and many returnees in the area.

7 - Provision of Free Legal Aid in Donji Lapac Municipality

Project had five objectives:

Promotion of Return Program prepared by Government of Republic of Croatia
Provision of all kinds of free legal aid to endangered people
Creation of conditions for reintegrating returnees and settlers into Croatian society
Connecting to organizations in and out of the Republic of Croatia that support return from and to FRY and BiH
Provision of free legal aid related to:

- Status rights

- Repossession and protection of property, reconstruction right, housing care

- Pensions, social welfare, health insurance

Our office in Donji Lapac has helped 764 persons with different legal and administrative problems (total of 1 272 cases – 227 status rights, 75 property and ownership rights, 242 reconstruction, 46 housing, 210 pensions, 143 health insurance and social welfare, 67 returnees status, 4 minor offences, and 2588 other cases).

Prevailing legal cases related to reconstruction, status rights, retirement insurance, health insurance and social welfare.

Legal aid provision has given with national or religious discrimination. According to the clients feedback this project has been very successful.

8 - ECRA – Western Slavonia

This Program has consisted of two components: social economic.

The social part objective has been: to promote reintegration in the targeted communities (municipalities Đulovac, Okučani, Pakrac Town) through enforcing local community boards and local citizen associations, to connect civil groups, local government and private sector, and to provide legal help.

During the Program period all the above-mentioned factors, namely: local community councils, local associations, and local governments on the territory have held coordination meetings exchanging experience and information about needs and priority investments in the community (16 coordination meetings, 184 local community boards and local association participants).

Also, a series of workshop on community boards and local citizen associations reinforcement and capacity build up took place (6 different workshops attended 179 local community boards local association member). The main objective was to present models of participation in a local community activities, tolerant dialog, team work, proposal writing, communication with outside donors.

Beside the workshops, there were individual consultations with all three municipalities associations. The individual consultations were offered to those associations assessed as perpective ones in terms of the initial capacity, concrete activities, and high survival probability. The individual consultations were supposed to needs and enforce the initial promising start off (5 individual consultations for the same number of associations and 30 representatives).

The newly acquired knowledge has open up a door to some existing community problems and has offered olutions in financing some important programs. The education taught those local community boards and local associations how to apply for donations. However, the SDF and IRC members have given a valuable technical support and expertise in the application procedure itself. From the total number of 12 applicants, 8 got granted donations for the purposed projects.

Based on an agreement between IRC and SDF, in April 2003 there was an invitation for the second round of small grants available to all local community boards and local associations from all three ECRA municipalities. Each municipality had a share of 10 grants or $US 1.000.000 per project. From 40 proposals, the Local Community Council in cooperation with a team of experts for civil society development accepted 35 applications, based on elaborated criteria (sustainability, evident usefulness for the entire community, implementation possibility, real community need for the solution of that kind, level of volunteers contributions.

Those three municipalities got total of 203.997.78 kn, while local communities offices and local associations volunteers contributed 132.023.69 kn.

The ECRA municipalities local associations and local community boards held their II festival in Đulovac. A total number of 41 – local associations (23) and local community boards (18) from municipalities Okučani, Đulovac, Pakrac Town, Dvor na Uni and Obrovac took a chance to participate and present promotional leaflets with their past performance and future activities. The event has been a very good opportunity to meetings and experience exchange. Thanks to the lucky occasion of having guests from foreign embassies, AED, CARE, UNHCR, OSCE, Urban Institute, The Office for National Minorities. USAID, etc, and also the neighbor municipalities and counties representatives this certainly was a good opportunity to meet potential donors.

After ECRA program has ended in Okučani, Đulovac and Pakrac it left behind 3 new civil associations, 6 newly formed returned local community boards and activists have become quite inhabituated to having regular local community boards and local associations coordinations meetings in all three municipalities.

The economic part of ECRA project aims towards initiating various business activities enabling the young generation better employment opportunities and helping the local institutions in municipalities Pakrac. Okučani and Đulovac to gain ground. As it mostly a rural area significant agricultural resources, the emphasis is on helping organizing family farms. A team of experts formed to put the project in work has had interviewed and surveyed family farms, associations, cooperative farms and assessed their business potential, financial capabilities and the level of expertise in the field and development needs.

Based on that survey, 5 cooperative farms, 3 associations, and 1 citizen initiative have been granted a participation in the project. All the subjects are registered as Agricultural Cooperative Farms (with ECRA financial and expert assistance). The expert team has designed an adequate education program to the cooperatives (agricultural cooperative farms management, organizing products marketing, training in production technology).

In this Cooperative Farms Program has been invested $US 442.000. Out of it seven agricultural cooperation farms have reached the sustainability level.

The business ECRA project has had additional program components that encompass connections to and interactions with local schools, local offices for economy, and Croatian Institute for Agriculture – Counseling Department, also job training programs for the young population. In cooperation with The Employment Offices, management offices, and the employer's representatives have laid out the business needs upon which they invited applicants. Out of 96 candidates that have been through the job training, 38 succeeded in finding a job.

The ECRA project had very good media coverage. Articles were published and TV and radio shows presented: HTV, NET Kutina, NET PINK, Banja Luka, TV B-92, Radio Daruvar, Radio Bljesak, Radio Quirinus, Radio Nova Gradiška, Radio Gradiška, Večernji list, Jutarnji List and Pakračko-Lipički list.

9 - ECRA – Banija and Kordun

The intention of the project was to increase the rate of return of refugees and displaced people from FRY, BiH and Croatia back to their pre-war permanent residence through providing adequate legal assistance in solving their status and housing problems. The project was implemented in 4 town of Banovina / Kordun – Gvozd, Vojnić, Dvor and Hrvatska Kostajnica.

The project included 2 types of activities:

1. Cross-border return:

· To hold information dissemination campaigns focused on the refugees and displaced people in FRY and BiH;

· To notify the target population about the return process via different media) press, radio and TV programs);

· To organize visits of local officials from Croatian areas of special state concern to the refugee camps in FRY and BiH;

· To work together with local authorities and other NGOs while preparing the so called «Go and See» visits of refugees and displaced people to their pre-war homes and to provide logistic support;

2. Reintegration of returnees in the communities:

· To provide free of charge legal assistance to returnees, refugees, displaced persons and domicile population of Vojnic, Gvozd, Hrvatska Kostajnica and Dvor;

· To keep contacts with local authorities, Housing Commissions, County Offices for Reconstructions and Development, branch offices of Croatian Institute for medical Insurance, social welfare offices and Croatian Institute for Pension Insurance with the aim of helping the returnees exercise their rights and entitlements and to speed up the procedure of repossession and reconstruction of returnee property.

The implementation of the project helped to achieve three objectives refugee and returnee population received high quality, free of charge legal assistance to help them exercise their human and social rights; positive examples in the return and reintegration encouraged other refugees to return to their pre-war domicile in Croatia; better media coverage of the return and reintegration process.

In the framework of the project, we:

1) Held 15 information dissemination campaigns (10 in FRY + 5 in BiH). 650 potential returnees were directly acquainted with the chances of return and reintegration in their pre-war communities;

2) Distributed 96.000 copies of the magazine «Identity» containing essential information for refugees accommodated in FRY, BiH and Croatia;

3) In 6 TV programs for ethnic minorities called «Prism» broadcast by Croatian national TV house, we provided comprehensive information on the status and the life of Serb minority in Croatia. As this program is received not only in Croatia but also in large parts of BiH and Serbia/Monte Negro, we believe that it produced significant effect on the return process;

4) Helped transporting 1.900 refugees during the «Go and See» visits to the birth/marriage/death registries in 4 a.m. municipalities;

5) Offered legal advising and wrote various applications for estimated 10.000 beneficiaries.

10 - Accelerated Processing of Reconstruction Applications

In the project the SDF legal advisers have provided a legal and logistic support to the returnees and displaced people. The main help has been regarding the house reconstruction requests completion, and a «link service» between county offices for reconstruction and applicants who have still been in Serbian and Monte Negro or in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or those who returned to Croatia but reside out of their previous locations. The «link service» basically connects the official with users, forwards mail, locates people on their new addresses, passes on information, etc.

Four main areas of the activities:

Communication link between county offices for reconstruction and the applicants out of Croatia (Serbia and Monte Negro, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Some mail has been handed in to the recipients in the Republic of Croatia who in meantime have returned from exile. The SDF team usually has had a legal counselor who would at the spot give an advice regarding the reconstruction requests. In many cases SDF activists would locate an applicant and invite him to come in person to Croatia to the county office for the paper work completion. Quite often the SDF office would help with collecting documents, inheritance proceedings, land registry certificates, officially recording houses, etc. For this purpose SDF would hire lawyers if needed in more complicated cases. During this project 9 411 written statements were forwarded to the users.
The reconstruction requests to the county offices have to have the following info: address, name and ID of the house reconstruction applicant and household members (in many cases the ID's were missing). Based on the acquired information and addresses in exile in Serbia and Monte Negro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina the users were located either in person or over phone and their ID's were collected. In collaboration with Ministry of Public Works and Reconstruction, SDF collected more than 1500 identification numbers and forwarded them to the reconstruction offices.
Every object for reconstruction has to be officially approved and has to obtain an expert reconstruction documentation. For that purpose Ministry of Public Works and Reconstruction have signed contracts with project bureaus assigned for that job. The SDF activists would be handy at the spot to show the officials an object and after that they would locate the users in other to have them sign the papers as necessary prerequisite for the reconstruction to start off. The SDF representatives helped 557 cases in year 2003.
In collaboration with Ministry of Public Works and reconstruction the owners of the objects by the main tourist roads to the Adriatic Coast were located in other to arrange with them clearing the rubbles and start reconstruction.

11,12,13 - Newsmagazine «IDENTITET»

Las year «Identitet» had 10 issues. Croatian Government, through its Minority Committee, financed six of them and international donors – OSCE and Norwegian Embassy helped issue the remaining four.

The magazine, according to many domestic and foreign readers opinion, has held a significantly high quality of texts as well as graphic design. «Identitet» has continued its already established and recognizable editorial angle emphasizing cosmopolitan and a two-way dialog, yet not forgetting but even more improving some Serb national identity highlights. During this year besides common texts describing current problems in Serb community (security, refugees return, property rights, etc). «Identitet» has published various authors opinions on actual issues like: multiethnic communication, cultural connections among different ethnic groups not long ago set against each other, creating a civil society, civil and human rights promotion.

«Identitet» has taken pride in publishing journalists and intellectuals, all coming from different political streams and national backgrounds of the former Yugoslavia, yet well know and highly regarded. Among those are: Igor and Slavica Mandić, Miljenko Jergović, Marinko Čulić, Miloš Vasić, Čedimir Višnjić, Tatjana Tagirov, Ivo Žanić, Lino Veljak, Igor Lasić, Goran Borković, Ivica Đikić, Boris Rašeta, etc.

Much like the other minority publications, «Identitet» suffers from the same malady: lack of finances, no editorial office and no publishing equipment, no permanent staff, no selling opportunity. As, so to speak, has been predestined to be sustained and survive by pure enthusiasm. Not worth mentioning how difficult it has been to stay at the level and fulfill its informative, educational, humanistic and other high set purpose. However, according to the readers opinion «Identitet» has successfully accomplished its job most of the time. Concerning minority problems (every Serb paper in Croatia in that respect look alike), we left them just to be one of the themes in the paper. Our intention has been to create a compelling, intellectually respectable, relevant paper that covers a wide array of civil society concerns.

14 - The NGOs and Local Government Cooperation

This project's objectives were to solve the problem of permanent housing for the community members and for that purpose strengthening cooperation between civil initiatives and local government was necessary. The achieved results: 5 flats reconstructed for settlers families (17 people), 3 houses returned back to the original owners (3 Serb families – 9 family members), better cooperation between SDF and local government (Pakrac).

SDF has reconstructed 3 houses (4 flats) and turned it into permanent housing for endangered settlers from Bosia and Herzegovina; 4 returnees families will get back their property and will be able to return back to Croatia. In the project realization the following factors took part: APN (buying off), Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction and Construction (donated building material), The Town Pakrac (designated sanitary objects users).

Another project objective has anticipated only 3 houses return to the 3 Serb returnees families (9 family members). Yet, thanks to the SDF and ODPR from Požega cooperation, 8 houses have been returned to the returnees in Pakrac, and additional 2 houses and 2 housing units are supposed to be returned to the project users. Also, cooperation with offices for displaced people and refugees have got better results in terms of actual return of the property to the lawful owners – 7 occupied houses have been returned back to the Serbs returnees (18 family members) and 1 housing unit has been returned to the Serb Orthodox Church.

SDF has also significantly improved communication with local self-government – regular meetings with a mayor, cooperation with Office for Public Affairs (joint development expert team has been organized for the local community committees and local associations needs), cooperation with Ministry for Communally Affairs. SDF has been lately considered as a non-governmental organization that serves need of all citizens, not only Serbs.

15 - Fieldwork Lawyer

A three-month pilot project that started out of necessity to assist people living in remote villages (Cetina, Ervenik and Vrlika) in Dalmatia area. Usually lack of finances or poor health condition won't allow them to easily visit towns to seek legal help when needed. The fieldwork lawyer office was open 3 times a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday), 10 a.m. – 1. P.m.

During this project 137 people visited the office and 161 different kinds of legal help was offered. The most common (68 cases) dealt with reconstruction rights, 56 cases were related to retirement rights. Than follows humanitarian aid, housing, property repossession, years of service convalidation (labor rights). This office has issued 53 written legal statements and the rest was just verbal legal advice.

The average age of the users was over 50, only 12 persons were under 50; this is so as the majority of the returnees are older people and also elderly people prefer at the spot service over long trips to the towns.

16 - Logistic Help in House Reconstruction – Banija

The project has been implemented in towns Petrinja and Glina, minicipalities Dvor, Gvozd and Vojnić. It has provided a technical, financial and executive help in the war damaged (I-III category) houses reconstruction. Within the project 754 housing units were surveyed, among which 306 have been approved for reconstruction. (Petrinja 75, Dvor 75, Gvozd 56 and Vojnić 25). For all designated objects contracts were signed with ASB, and in municipality Gvozd 50 owners have signed takeover technical documentation for reconstructed houses (in other municipalities the reconstruction is till in progress). In this project realization 11 people were engaged (bookkeeper, computer operator, the project manager, regional assistant, civil engineer, construction builder, sociologists demographer and 4 field assistants.

At the same time, along with the same project, it has been worked on locating returnees and helping them in completing and signing their house reconstruction agreements. Also, the Ids and addresses have been checked for 3600 property owners who applied for reconstructions while in Serbia and Monte Negro. It has been located 360 persons in returnee status, checked 110 addresses for the owners of the objects by the road D-1 Karlovac – Plitvice.

1374 notifications were distributed out to the reconstruction users in Republic of Croatia, Serbia and Monte Negro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina; 1134 notifications were handed in, 203 notifications were returnees (unknown address), 37 notifications are still in progress. In this project 18 took part – lawyer, the project executor and 16 volunteers.

17 - Growing Lavender

Women's Initiative Vojnić with Croatian Government Office for Associations assistance has initiated this project in other to improve quality of life in the area and to help local women self – employment.

This project engaged directly about 25 people (project manager and executor, 15 volunteers and their family members). They have worked together on preparing land and planting 1400 seedlings. Within the project two panel discussions on growing lavender have been held (the plant property, cultivation, processing, marketing). To help this project the following experts have been contacted: Irex-Aroma, the local agricultural department and local agricultural association and Croatian Agricultural Institute - Counseling Department.

The lavender project is in progress in 2004 when we are also looking forward to some financial profit.

18 - Enforcing the Capacity of Local Community Councils and Associations

This project's objective has been to motivate and initiate citizens in the area of municipality Sirač to participated more in local councils and associations’ activities. Within the project activities two rounds of life workshop took place. They dealt with the following themes:

Organizing and planning civil group activities
Project proposal writing
Budget planning
Fund raising
Local community cooperation models and instruments
Project management
Long term planning

In this workshop 98 representatives from 10 local communities councils and associations from the area of Sirač participated; there were 4 coordinating meetings with local government. Under a mentorship 6 local communities councils and 1 association have written mini projects (within given conditions) for solving infrastructure problems in local community councils (association equipment). All proposals count on 50% community contribution to the required finances. That project will be s basis documentation for requesting funding from municipality Sirač budget for 2004.

Achieved results: thanks to the workshops local communities councils and associations from Sirač municipality area have widen their horizons regarding civil society build up and democratization process, the local communities boards and local government have improved their cooperation, citizens in local community boards and association members are better informed about civil society traits. The better knowledge will be applied towards better regular funding, 20 people are trained and local communities boards and associations are now capable of confidently contacting domestic and foreign donors are fund raising for their activities.

19 - The Return and Reconstruction Assistance

This project has been realized in cooperation with Ministry for Public Works and reconstructions for betterment and more efficient solution to the refugee problems – property repossession, housing, and reconstruction.

All 18 SDF offices (in Croatia, Serbia and Monte Negro and Bosnia and Herzegovina) have been engaged in providing various kinds of legal help to the returnees and refugees, like free of charge legal counseling to expellees, refugees, and returnees (rights and obligations, conditions and possibilities for property repossession, housing, reconstruction).

Activities:

Finding users' addresses for the use of reconstruction offices (702 cases)
Informing users on the request additional paper work (877)
Direct help to the users in their request completion (1557 cases)
Informing users about signing the sanitation instructions or house transfer (697 houses)
Forwarding mail from reconstruction offices to the users:

- Received 11 326 cases

- Delivered to the clients 11 325 cases

- Undeliverable mail (unknown recipient) 973 cases

- Delivering still in progress 2 368 cases

So, dealing with reconstruction cases in the filed, SDF has worked on 15 159 cases.

The SDF field cooperators have been busy visiting refugees locations and updating the refugees on the situation in their place of return, legal and security conditions and at the same time they would collect data necessary for reconstruction request. Also, 5 panel discussions have been organized in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 6 in Serbian and Monte Negro.

Through the SDF monthly magazine «Identitet», that has been distributed in Croatia, Serbia and Monte Negro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, SDF informed refugees about property repossession, housing and reconstruction problems.

In cooperation with Croatian Settlers Communities Associations (ZUNH) SDF has initiated publishing paper «Pogledi» which also has had themes and information essential to the expellees, returnees and refugees and has exchanged texts dealing with refugee problems.

20 - National Minority Councils Education (workshops)

In cooperation with National Minorities Council and OSCE, SDF has organized workshops for council members and national minorities representatives. The workshops took place in Sisak and Šibenik in 2003, with participation of representatives from 11 national minorities: Albanian, Bosnian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Serbian and a Roma.

The workshops themes:

a) National Minorities Board competence and activities, and its cooperation with national minorities councils

b) Constitutional Law on national minorities rights, its implementation, lawful protection national minorities special rights 8with similar laws)

c) Establishing National Minorities Council on the level of municipality, city, county, their work and coordination, and their practical problems.

SDF Management Board

Sead Berberović

Veljko Džakula, Board President

Dušan Ećimović

Drenko Gaćeša

Ankica Gorkič

Borjanka Metikoš

Mihail Petrov

Marina Prodanović

Miomir Vesković

Nikola Vujnović

Daniel Žderić

Serbian Democratic Forum

Gundulićeva 55

10 000 Zagreb, Hrvatska

T: + 385 1 49 21 862

F: + 385 1 49 21 827

Zagreb-sdf@sdf.hr

No.	Project title	Donor	EUR	USD	KN	Location
1	Repatriation and Reintegration of Refugees	UNHCR	714.391	892.845	5.462.880	Croatia
2	Triangl Repatriation Project	Danish Refugee Council	14.380	17.743	108.563	Western Slavonia
3	Comprehensive Advocacy Strategy for the Rights of Refugees	Danish Refugee Council	25.034	24.692	151.080	Croatia
4	Somebodya Land - 4 TV Broadcasts	OSCE	91.800	86.389	528.571	Croatia
5	Identification of Beneficiaries and Coordination of Refugees	ASB	60.000	71.208	435.688	Croatia, S/MN
6	Provision of Free Legal Assistance to Vulnerable Groups	SHC	40.950	50.364	308.151	Dalmatia
7	Free Legal Aid - Donji Lapac	Governmental Office for Human Rights	4.839	6.047	37.000	Donji Lapac
8	ECRA, Western Slavonia	IRC	94.603	128.932	723.419	Western Slavonia
9	ECRA, Banovina/Kordun	Mercy Corps	164.039	201.292	1.254.388	Bania and Kordun
10	Accelerated Processing of Reconstruction Applications	Canadian Embassy	50.795	63.483	388.423	Croatia
11	Identitet - monthly magazine	OSCE	9.235	4.492	27.483	Croatia
12	Identitet	Council for Ethnic Minorities, Government of Croatia	31.385	39.225	240.000	Croatia
13	Identitet	Norwegian Embassy	9.808	12.258	75.000	Croatia
14	The NGOs and Local Government Cooperation	Canadian Embassy	2.205	2.756	16.864	Western Slavonia
15	Fieldwork Lawyer	OSCE	3.930	4.351	26.622	Dalmatia
16	Logistic Help in House Reconstruction	ASB	90.000	99.706	610.052	Bania and Kordun
17	Growing Lavender	Ministry for Crafts and SME, Government of Croatia	1.962	2.452	15.000	Vojnić
18	Enforcing the Capacity of Local Community Councils	Governmental Office for Associations	8.147	10.182	62.300	Western Slavonia
19	The Return and Reconstruction Assistance	Ministry for Public Works and Reconstructions	104.617	130.751	800.00	Croatia
20	National Minority Councils Education	OSCE	13.674	15.020	91.900	Croatia
	TOTAL		1.535.794	1.864.188	10.563.384

REPORT 2003

SDF Projects in 2003