UN Radio in Kosovo

UNV Profile

By Andrea Saula

Hello and welcome. From the Studios of UN Radio in Kosovo…

“It was quite chaotic because prisoners were always shouting, sometimes even fighting amongst themselves. So my first task was to start training.”

Jane Muya’s impression when she first visited Lipljan prison in May of 2002. Muya, a psychiatric nurse from Kenya is one of over 200 United Nations volunteers working for the UN Mission in Kosovo.

As she describes, the prison officers had no experience dealing with mentally ill prisoners before she arrived – basically locking and unlocking cell-doors to let prisoners wander the halls of Lipljan detention center’s special compound for the mentally ill.

Muya’s skills as a psychiatric nurse have been a vital resource for Kosovo’s local and international staff – training them in techniques to deal with the mentally ill.

“This helped a lot and enabled them to know how to deal with these mentally sick, how even to support nurses because it was very difficult for the nurses even to be able to give medicines because officers didn’t know even how to talk to them, how to calm them down, because simply they didn’t have these skills.”

In many countries, when people commit crimes and are sentenced to prison, it is only after psychiatric evaluations in these prison facilities that they are diagnosed with mental illnesses.

Before the 1999 Conflict, mentally ill prisoners in Kosovo were sent to facilities in Belgrade equipped to meet their specific needs. Today Lipljan jail has been equipped to deal with as many as 22 mentally ill prisoners.

UNV Muya says many positive changes have been made at Lipljan prison in the two years she has been in Kosovo. One example: the role of corrections officers – at Lipljan prison, she says they have learned techniques that put them in a professional category somewhere between officer and nurse aid.

But Muya, who has worked in other trouble spots throughout the world, wants more rapid progress in Kosovo’s mental health sector. She says it is essential that more nurses be trained to work with these prisoners.

“We have already started and we hope it is going to be accomplished by mid 2005, to be able to interact more with prisoners, to do more group therapy, to be able to identify much better the problems of a prisoner – which is more than they re able to that at the present.”

Jane Muya says the UN Mission’s Special Representative to the Secretary General, Soren Jessen-Petersen has endorsed new program initiatives at Lipljan prison. Although this support is of key importance, there are many elements to treating mentally ill prisoners that must be considered and instituted.

“There’s something that we call occupational therapy and there are activities, which aim at re-orienting the person to normal life; recreation – for an example, we have various games, which the prisoners usually participate on daily bases. The aim of these games and activities is to reorient these people because mentally ill people are out of reality, and as he gets better, he moves towards one reality.”

Jane Muya says reintegrating these prisoners into society is an uphill battle, adding there is a huge stigma towards the mentally ill in Kosovo society, especially towards those who have committed crimes.

Much like her experience working with the mentally ill in East Timor, the work she is doing in Kosovo gives her great satisfaction.

“It’s an inspiring job. One needs commitment and has to have a will. I enjoy working at the grass route, directly with people and it’s one of the reasons why I left my job in East Timor. I’m happy to have an experience to see a change from 2002 to date. It is my hope that by the time we are hanging over and leaving we will have a team that will be able to do better then they were in 2002.”

That was Jane Muya, a Kenyan psychiatric nurse working as a United Nation’s volunteer with mentally sick prisoners in the Lipljan correctional facility.

Thanks for listening and stay tuned as United Nations radio in Kosovo continues to bring personal profiles of those doing important work in Kosovo.