On Friday, May 20, 2011, the fifteenth anniversary of the existence and work of the Center for Independent Living of Disabled People of Serbia was celebrated in Belgrade.

This anniversary was an opportunity to look back at the most significant achievements in promoting rights and equal opportunities for people with disabilities in Serbia to show how knowledge, dedication, persistence and faith in the ideas we are fighting for must result in changes that will create circumstances in which people with disabilities will live more dignified and equal.

Thanks to the ten-year struggle of the members of the Center, as well as their numerous friends and associates, individuals and representatives of institutions, in Serbia the support system based on the right to a personal assistant has developed from an idea conceived at the Center for Independent Living into a service in the field of social protection, which has ensured its existence by being positioned in the Law on Social Protection and the Law on Employment of Persons with Disabilities of the Republic of Serbia.

The above, as well as numerous other achievements, would not have been possible if a team of people with disabilities, led by Gordana Rajkov, who is one of the pioneers in advocating for independent living for people with disabilities in the former Yugoslavia, had not gathered around the ideas that were being implemented at the Center for Independent Living.

Also, the achievements of the Center for Independent Living are the best indicator of how issues related to the phenomenon of disability are universal and how true progress in this area is possible only if the approach to disability issues is based on the fact that the basis of all problems faced by people with disabilities are based on the respect / non-respect of human rights and the existence of barriers that society produces preventing people with disabilities from enjoying them.

And at the very end of this note:

We wish our friends from the Center for Independent Living of Disabled People of Serbia to celebrate many, many more successful anniversaries crowned with new advances in the fight for the rights and equal opportunities of persons with disabilities;

And may the achievements of the Center serve as a motivation for activists of the disability movement to advocate for changes in their communities that will ensure a dignified life based on respect for rights and the creation of equal opportunities for all persons with disabilities.