10 December 2003

International Federation of the Red Cross

Surviving Day-to-Day in Serbia

by Marie-Françoise Borel in Stara Pazova

"Just give me a normal job, and I will be able to buy a house and give my children a better future." There is frustration, resentment and sadness in Gojko Grubic's voice as he thinks back on the eight years which have passed since he was forced to flee with his parents, his wife, Mira, and their two children from Benkovac, a village now in Croatia.

Mira, 38, was pregnant then with their third child. They left their house, their land, their garden by tractor on August 4, 1995, and entered Serbia on August 12. The baby was born in Pancevo, a town just northeast of Belgrade, ten days later.

Gojko and his family are among an estimated 700,000 people living in Serbia and Montenegro, who have been displaced by the successive conflicts in the region since 1991. More than 95 per cent of them are housed in private accommodation, just like the Grubic family.

After spending five years living in a collective centre in Kragujevac, some 90 km south of Belgrade, they moved to Stara Pazova, 40 km north of Belgrade, where Gojko thought he would have a better chance of finding a job. Nearly 40 per cent of the town's population of 60,000 are refugees or displaced.

Gojko, 46, is a plumber by trade and his wife used to work in a factory. Now, he scrambles for odd plumbing jobs in private homes. Mira cleans houses and does some laundry.

Precarious

"In a good month," Mira explains, "we are able to make 300 euros, but we pay 75 euros in rent for the house, plus electricity and school fees. Today, there is enough for food, but tomorrow? We are living day-to-day," she says. If they do not come up with the money to pay the rent, they will be expelled from their small house.

Survival is precarious in Serbia where, according to the government's latest survey, published in April 2003, some 1.6 million people, out of a population of 7.5 million, live at or just below the poverty line equivalent to 67 euros a month. Those statistics do not take into account the refugees and displaced people who are considered even more vulnerable than the local population.

The Red Cross of Serbia and Montenegro is doing its best to provide them with the essentials for sheer survival, providing monthly food supplies - 12 kg wheat flour, 1 kg sugar, 1 litre oil, 1 kg beans per person - to those over 65 years old and to children. It also serves 42,000 meals a day to the poorest.

Such help is welcome in a country where the economy and government resources are insufficient to meet the needs of the poorest. But with most international aid ending at the end of the winter, the Red Cross will have to cut back its assistance.

Milan Skoko, Secretary of the Stara Pazova Red Cross branch explains just how serious the situation is in this town, which has received 23,000 refugees since 1992, most of them coming from the Krajina region in 1995: "The situation is particularly critical. A large number of people are too young, too old or too sick to work. And those who can work cannot find jobs. If humanitarian aid stops, people will starve in the heart of Europe. This conclusion is drawn from the facts, not from my imagination."

Return impossible

The Grubic family wants to stay in Serbia, as their house has been burned and return is impossible for them. They are placing their hope in their children, and trying to put them through school so they have a chance for a better future.

The three children are good students; the eldest, their 19-year-old son, Ljubisa, is working towards a diploma in technological sciences, while their daughter, Milena, 17, is studying to be a pharmacist. They are both in Belgrade since local schools cannot offer them the same opportunities.

Grandfather Savo Grubic, 75, has just lost his wife. He says, wistfully: "It's been difficult for me, but my life is almost over, and now I worry about my children's and my grandchildren's future."

The situation is just as bad for the refugees as it is for the local population, says Milan Skoko. "What will the Red Cross do when we have no more food to distribute? How will these people survive? They must not be forgotten."