Western Balkan Authorities Raise Their Capacities for Implementing Awareness-Raising Activities

Committed to helping enhance diversification of ways in which awareness-raising on small arms and light weapons (SALW) is used and to strengthen institutional capacities for conducting effective awareness-raising efforts across the Western Balkans, on 4 and 5 April in Budva, SEESAC organised the 3rd meeting of the Western Balkans Regional Awareness-Raising Task Force.

By fostering information sharing on recent, on-going, and awareness-raising campaigns currently in preparatory phase, the meeting allowed the representatives of the Western Balkan jurisdictions to discuss challenges encountered, results achieved, and lessons learned in the area.

The Task Force explored the role media play in the awareness-raising efforts and how more strategic engagement with them can turn them into a powerful asset of a campaign. Among others, Sanja Pavlovic of the Journalists Against Violence Against Women spoke about the ongoing collaboration with SEESAC on developing a regional Analysis of Media Reporting of Gender-Based Violence in Instances when SALW was used.

SEESAC’s plans to develop Guidelines tailor-made for the Ministries of Interior and Police Forces in the region on how to better communicate with the media on gender-based violence with the use of SALW were announced and interest in other activities explored. Research, as a foundation of strong campaigns, was thoroughly discussed. Last year’s survey conducted by UNDP Albania and SEESAC’s ongoing research on factors driving demand for misuse of SALW framed the discussion.  

Based on the expressed interests of the first Task Force meeting’s participants, during the second day of the meeting, a tailor-made training dedicated to exploring the available methods and tools for monitoring and evaluating a campaign as a way of assessing current efforts and securing better long-term results was conducted by SEESAC’s experts in the field.

The meeting was organised in the scope of SEESAC’s more extensive work of increasing response to factors fuelling demand and misuse of firearms in the Western Balkans as part of the Support for Enhancing the Fight Against the Illegal Possession, Misuse, and Trafficking of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in the Western Balkans project, funded by the European Union through the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II).

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