#No_Name_Kitchen is leaving the #Border_Violence_Monitoring_Network
We are No Name Kitchen, a movement created by activists and people on the move in Serbia at the beginning of 2017. The first time we heard about a pushback we didn’t even know what it meant, but everybody talked about it all day long. Months later, we started a joint initiative with other groups working in Northern Serbia to put together in a common database all the testimonies of border violence that we were collecting. The goal was to achieve a unified methodology that would bring robustness to our figures, strengthen our capacity to raise awareness and advocate for a change. We called it the Border Violence Monitoring project (later on, BVMN).
More than five years later, that little baby has grown: we have compiled more than 1,600 violence reports, developed many tools, reached high-level policymakers and media, and made a lot of good noise. Still, we have not put an end to border violence, that’s true, but we know it will happen sooner or later.
We have loved this project right from the very beginning, but the project´s management seems to have taken a particular direction, which, for us, is no longer in line with NNK´s values of respect, fairness and transparency, for the reasons described below:
1 – Undervaluation of fieldwork:
NNK has produced almost 50% of the total reports published in BVMN´s history, and we are proud to have been the sap of this tree. It is not an easy task: to monitor violence at the borders you need an attitude, a plan and a method, but above all, you need to be at the borders. For this obvious reason, the partners´ fieldwork is the backbone of this project. There is nothing more essential than the activists who identify the abuses, develop trust with those who suffer the violence, listen to the stories and share the reports.
Besides this, and for years, the communication managed by the BVMN coordination staff has been oriented to present BVMN as an organization in itself (click for examples), confusing activists, media, politicians and donors alike, who cannot understand that it is not BVMN, but field partners, such as NNK, Collective Aid or Mobile Info Team, who make that work.
2 – Management of resources:
The proposals that are regularly submitted by the BVMN´s fundraising staff to potential donors describe how BVMN will use the funds to collect testimonies, systematize reports and advocate for a change in policy making. The reality, instead, is that up to 85% of the resources are not allocated to field monitoring activities, but rather to BVMN off-field expenses, mainly connected to salaries.
In this regard, NNK believes that this financial approach, while the rest of the partners have to raise funds on their own, where field partners can´t present themselves as BVMN, is unbalanced and undermines the identity of the network.
Furthermore, NNK and other partners have shared multiple concerns regarding the lack of access to BVMN´s accountability and the irregular processes carried out to select new staff in the past, or to raise salaries, more recently, skipping the partners´ Assembly to make use of BVMN’s resources with low transparency.
Last, a very illustrative example of the unfairness we refer to: NNK has had surrealistic conversations with donors who have said: “Sorry, but we can´t fund your activities because we are already funding an organization called BVMN to collect reports in those places where you want to do so”, referring to sites where NNK has been the only one to collect reports for years.
3 – Lack of mutual care:
Since the end of 2020 NNK has received multiple testimonies of colleagues within the network who claim to have suffered different forms of mistreatment and lack of respect while developing BVMN-related activities. Taking a look at all the stories together, we identified three severe problems: first, there are some people putting strong pressure on their workmates. Second, most people are afraid to talk, recognizing a culture of fear, where the same people who fight every day to denounce other kinds of violence suffered by the people on the move, keep silent about the practices they themselves suffer; and last, all the testimonies point at the same people.
The network was created to take care of the people on the move, but to manage to do this, we first need to take care of ourselves. There is no way we can accept certain behaviors, and today we request to put an end to this, because, we, Kitcheners, are activists, we are lionesses: if somebody touches one of us, they touch us all.
For this reason, NNK decides to leave the network, revealing the past to take care of our future.
Disclaimer: NNK will continue to collect testimonies, to report and to denounce without any break, but we will do it differently, more creative, more audiovisual, more partners, making an special effort to reach that part of the European civil society who ignores the neverending drama at the borders, and keeping our priority number one: supporting the people on the move on their right to raise their voices.
▻https://www.nonamekitchen.org/thats-not-all-folks-no-name-kitchen-important-news
#BVNM #Route_des_Balkans #violence #Balkans #migrations #asile #réfugiés