Number 2, Summer 1995

CCCRTE

Alan Pleydell

Following the fall of Romania's Nicolae Ceaucescu in late 1989, and the world's to the world of sudden awareness of, amongst other ills, the misery of the orphanages, there was a flurry of outside interest in giving help, through adoption, through medical aid and food aid, with the setting up of new charities, the recognition of the AIDS crisis, etc.

There were times when the roads were jammed with aid convoys.There was, and remains, as with Yugoslavia, the question of the overall aim, coherence and co-ordination of these outside efforts. But since the beginning of the war in former Yugoslavia it has to be said that in information terms -- purely in terms of an outside knowledge of what is going on -- Romania is by now almost as invisible as ever. This may just be a matter of general public and press fatigue about matters in Eastern Europe.

That is not to say that nothing is going on. But the problems of Central and Eastern Europe, and certainly Romania, as one of the poorest countries (though it is rich in natural resources), are long-term; arising out of economic stagnation, chronic under-investment, skills shortages, deep social and ethnic divisions, and continuing lack of contact with the outside world and knowledge of its practices. All of this is compounded in Romania more than elsewhere by much of the old centralised power structure and the fact that key politicians have remained in place.

Five and a half years on, Romania is the scene neither of spectacular crisis nor of the sorts of economic improvement, which have been witnessed, for instance, in the Czech Republic and Hungary. In addition, many Western NGOs, not least some of the member organisations of the CCCRTE, no matter how serious the intent to be of service, have financial difficulties of their own about sustaining long-term support to any area of the world, (though here the Committee, for one, might be able to provide the continuity which its member organisations alone may not.) Even in the voluntary sector, funding tends to be on the basis of payment by results. But the problems are chronic, so by definition they are not going to be alleviated in the very short run.

This ought to provoke us to some fairly fundamental questions as to the value and style of whatever intervention we may attempt. Potentially, provided we are sufficiently humble and realistic, Romania is the sort of country where we may yet aspire to and ought to be able to make a difference. It certainly is not problem-free : it continues to have ethnic tension between Hungarians and Romanians in Transylvania; there are continuing problems of ethnic tension in Moldavia, and everywhere continuing problems of basic access to primary health care and to education. Continuing poverty is also a source of conflict.

Yet, almost by osmosis, gradual institutional change is taking place with outside help. Of initiatives we know about directly, the Berghof Foundation of Berlin has just completed a three-year project of youth training in Transylvania which has led to the creation of self-sustaining youth organisations spanning the ethnic divide. Training work with young people has also been undertaken by Magde Van der Erde and Abel Herzberger from the Netherlands. In 1990-2, Quaker Peace and Service assisted a Quaker health worker, Sally Markwell, in creating the Romania Project UK, which has been instrumental in setting up a network for the improvement of primary health care. In 1992, QPS also undertook an investigative trip to Transylvania and facilitated some dialogue between the Romanian Orthodox and Hungarian Reformed churches, which unfortunately was not followed up, owing to QPS' own organisational contraction. In 1995, CCCRTE received a request from Sally Markwell, who as a health training co-ordinator, was in Bucharest and was looking for support in conflict resolution training for health and education workers. The possibilities for this are still being investigated.

As so often in the experience of the Committee, what to do and how to develop work in Romania, if we proceed with it, will emerge as part of an organic process in which the people asking for training support clarify and articulate their wants and needs to themselves in the course of the interchange. One possible approach would be to start with a small pilot/investigative visit followed by an evaluation of the response. The aim would to be to nurture and develop the existing skills and capacities of those seeking the support -- to the point that they could eventually begin to sustain and develop their own training work and, in turn, contribute to the spread of the network of empowerment.

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