Meetings with other organizations

• UNDP. The Secretary General had the opportunity to meet with representatives of UNDP during a week’s stay as NGO observer at the UN head quarters in New York in November 2000. The new strategies for work described by the UNDP affiliates, with more emphasis on building on existing community resources and structure may open for more concrete collaboration both with regard to training of health personnel and meetings.
• ECOSOC. We have applied for observer’s status in ECOSOC and they are expecting a formal application from ISHHR.
• IRCT. IRCT had taken initiatives for a special hearing to be held in the European Parliament regarding funding for centres for torture victims. Several affiliated centres were invited to participate. ISHHR was formally invited to participate as speaker at the panel with the possibility of presenting ISHHR briefly and argue for the importance of financing services to torture victims, not only in special centres but also as part of mainstream assistance.

Economy and Fundraising. The situation also in the year 2000 was characterized by a difficult economic situation. During the year ISHHR finally had all its accounts in one bank and all transfers from earlier bank accounts finalized. The membership fees have represented our main income as will be shown from the economic report. Fundraising for the conference has been the main economic priority, and this has been rather difficult at the accounts from the last conference were severely delayed. Nevertheless they were finally and formally sent over to the Council for final approval in December 2000.

V Conference. Reports and audited accounts from the Conference held in South Africa were sent out to the donor organizations. They have been formally accepted by all donating institutions. A surplus from the conference, due to the fact that the grants from the Dutch Ministry were not completely spent due to late notice regarding the grant, was transferred from the South African bank to ISHHRs present account in Handelsbanken in Norway.

VIth Conference. A program and an organizing committee was created early in the year 2000 and these two groups, headed by respectively Loes van Willigen and Dean Ajducovic have been working very hard and successfully with the VI conference. Fund raising has mainly been organized from the Secretariat in Oslo.

Concluding comments. As will be clear from the above report, restraints regarding economy and capacity must account for limited activity and initiatives. There has been no council meeting during the period, a situation which is highly regrettable. We have nevertheless been able to keep up contact by other means as well as through meetings where council members have been able to meet each other, although not in full numbers. These ways of contact do in no way fulfil our need to meet as council and measures will be taken to assure that this is changed.

The establishment of a secretariat was a great help, and gave us a clearer base from which our work can be developed. Working on the membership registrations, developing this into a database with all the necessary and useful information has been given priority and should be continued as an issue of high importance. This should also go together with a better mapping of possible members around the world, inviting them to join ISHHR. The work in relation to health workers engaged in the field, but not members, that is, the process of getting out information about the Society and especially our conference, was substantial during the year 2000. Still there are many to be reached and here we will always have to rely on members’ assistance. Developing the Web site and being able to contact a large number of people through the web site as well as through electronic mail is a great advantage. It provides us with the opportunity to reach a large number of people for a modest sum. But - it does require a functional, informative and updated page. Initiating more formalized contacts with international organizations has been regarded as important. But again, the success of this depends on good regional work, regular contact with members and updated information about members and professional resources different places in the world. This is always a collective work and an important challenge for us a society focusing on human rights.

Finally - our capacity to react actively when human rights have been violated - has been limited, not due to will or interest but to capacity to do this as actively and forcefully as is needed in such cases. Many of these issues will be raised and discussed at our AGM 2001.

Oslo 18.05.01