📢 Open request for the Government’s commitment in the issue of dog population management (stray and owned)

📑 The National Strategy for the Management and Control of Dogs with and Without Owners has been approved since a year (October 2022), but despite this, the Government of Kosovo has not yet allocated a budget for the implementation of the strategy, as foreseen in the action plan. The year 2023 was without a budget and without implementation of the Strategy.

Although the municipalities (local level) have the main responsibility of implementing the measures of the National Strategy, they cannot do an effective and sustainable job in reducing the number of dogs on the streets 🐕 without coordination with the central level, since every measure that is undertaken in municipal level, is not solving the situation in a comprehensive and sustainable way (because of the lack of assessment of the dynamics of dogs, the priority of sterilization of dogs that increase the number, the lack of monitoring of CNVR or other projects, the lack of veterinary inspections, the lack of monitoring of dogs with owners and awareness-raising of dog owners, etc.).

Apart from some larger municipalities, many municipalities in Kosovo do not have sufficient budget to implement the strategy measures. Some municipalities have active CNVR projects to stop the reproduction of dogs. CNVR is a necessary measure that must be active all the time in the municipalities, but without proper monitoring and evaluation and other measures that must be taken in parallel, it will not have the desired effect.

📜 The advancement of the legal framework to control the source of the problem, which is dogs with keepers (owners), continuous inspections for responsible keeping of dogs, inspections of pet-shops and natural/legal persons that breed dogs, are the duty of the level central, namely the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development.

Our organization calls on the Government of Kosovo to allocate a budget for the implementation of the Strategy and to support and cooperate with the municipalities to manage the dog population in a humane and effective way.

Only with a comprehensive approach to problem solving can we see improvements.