FRANCAISSecours populaire français - History
1990-1999
-1991, France: during its congress in Montpellier, the SPF launches the “Young together Movement” (Solidairement jeunes) and starts to edit “Friends of the world” (Copains du Monde), a bimonthly magazine for children. The organisation also strengthens its partnership with the Dutch Stichting Europa Kinderhulp, which takes for the holidays underprivileged children from France.
-1992, Morocco: the SPF sends lawyers to defend political prisoners.
-From 1993, ex Yugoslavia: thanks to funds from the European union, André Pinatel, a worker priest from Marseille, opens an SPF office in Kosovo. When the Serbian repression gets stronger in 1998, the organisation extends its operation to Kosovo refugees in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. When NATO’s bombings start in June 1999, the SPF intervenes among Albanians as well as among the Serbs who have to flee from Kosovo.
-October 1994, Rwanda, Kigali: through José Kagabo, an African historian, the SPF starts supporting Benimpuhwe, a women’s mutual aid association which tries to place the orphans from the genocide in local foster families rather than put them in institutions or have them adopted in Europe.
-From 1994, Georgia: the SPF develops a farming project in Akhalgori valley so as not to limit its action to handing out food after the fights which devastated South Ossetia between 1989 and 1992. In 2000, the organisation widens its operation to other parts of South Ossetia in order not to work on one side only. In Akhalgori, it also starts getting less involved as ADA (Aid to Rural Development), a local NGO created by the SPF, takes over.
-Since 1995, Iraq, Kurdistan: the SPF starts distributing medicine through a local NGO created in 1991, Iraqi al-Amal.
