I knew very little about this event before I agreed to go but a professor from the university just sent me a program and everything about it looks like fantastic preparation for my master's program in Eurasian, Russian and East European studies. The schedule on Friday is packed. I'll get on a bus at 8 am in front of the Russian embassy and be bussed to a hotel in some area on the outskirts of Chisinau. The speakers include the ambassador from Belarus to Moldova, former ambassadors to Romania and Spain, and professors of history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Many other ambassadors and high-level government officials including the President of the Parliament and the Minister of External Affairs were invited. Topics will touch on the genesis and evolution of Moldovan identity, European integration, ethnic minorities in Transnistria and Gagauzia, migration issues, and a lot more. I'm really looking forward to this and hope my Romanian skills will be sufficient to understand most of the material because I think I might be the only English speaker there. The organizers of the event wanted a couple of Fulbright scholars there to make the event more international but due to the fact that the agenda is only in Romanian and Russian I kind of doubt that many of the presentations will be in English. Maybe they will translate the Romanian lectures into Russian if some of the people from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine do not speak Romanian. We'll see. More on this event later of course.
In other news, I went to an OSCE Anti-Trafficking and Gender roundtable meeting today and it was one of the most interesting that I've been to so far. The OSCE Representative on Gender Issues is visiting this week from Washington, DC so I think they were trying to share as much information with her as possible and many more people were present this time than last month in general. The Moldovan government's 2010 report on trafficking in persons was distributed and it shows a decrease in identified cases but there was once again a discussion on the difficulty of producing accurate statistics. The prosecutor from the Causeni region always poses some tough questions and constructive criticism. He mentioned that the roundtables should consist of fewer presentations on the successes of the various actors and more on a discussion of actual problems that the participants are facing and how they can make their projects more effective. As of now, the meetings consist primarily of powerpoint presentations by 1 or 2 NGOs or government actors that give overviews of their projects and some statistics on how many beneficiaries they have helped and so on. It's essential for the participants to have an idea of all the projects that are out there so that overlap can be prevented and coordination can be improved, but I would say that about 75% of the group is the same from month to month and the regulars already know the basics of the projects being presented, unless they are brand new of course. The meetings usually run short on time so the question and answer section, which is always the most interesting and productive part, is limited.
I also went to the US Embassy today to have visa pages added to my passport. It looks a little sketchy now because I have an old passport and the pages they added are from the new version so they look completely different and are just taped in there at the end. The consular officer assured me that it's legitimate though. I'll be going to Albania in a couple of weeks with Liz so it needs to work. By the way, check out Liz's blog because she has a great new video about Transnistria.
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