Macedonia Opens "Iron Gate" in Major Step Toward Ending Social Exclusion of Hundreds of Citizens
On September 18, the government of Macedonia, represented by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, signed a three-year cooperation agreement with the Open Society Mental Health Initiative on a project that will end the social exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities.
The project, called the "Community for All Initiative: Macedonia" will establish supported housing services in local communities throughout Macedonia. This ensures that people, many of whom have spent a lifetime in an institution excluded from society, will live in local communities as equal citizens and receive individualized support from Housing Services as part of the project.
The Special Institution Demir Kapija (which means "iron gate" in Turkish) is the only long-stay social welfare institution for people with intellectual disabilities in Macedonia. In spite of numerous attempts to improve conditions on the inside, residents are still unable to exercise their most basic human rights. Macedonia, which has a severe lack of alternatives to institutions, signed the United Nations Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities in March 2007. Today’s cooperation agreement will help the country make the provisions of the Convention a reality.
“This project will have a significant positive impact on the lives of hundreds of people with intellectual disabilities, and we are very pleased to have come to an agreement with the government of Macedonia on developing alternatives to institutional care,” said Judith Klein, director of the Open Society Mental Health Initiative. “This project is absolutely in line with the priority goals of Macedonia’s National Strategy for Deinstitutionalization of the System of Social Protection (2008-2018). By the end of the three-year implementation period, a cost effective and sustainable model of community-based supported housing will be in place, paving the way for such services to replace institutions entirely in the long run.”
The project, which builds on local and international expertise and resources, will pilot the relocation of residents from the special institution Demir Kapija to family-scale living arrangements in the community, while developing the range of comprehensive support services in the community, mechanisms for quality assurance and monitoring, and the financial and operational frameworks needed to sustain this change in the future.