Blog

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    From Smears to Strength: Defying Labels, Defending Democracy, and Riding the Red Bus of Change

     

    Over seven years have passed It has been over 7 years since the orchestrated attacks and state interference plagued the civil society community. While the memories seem to be slowly fading, the targets on our backs seem not to be. What is even more devastating to see, is those same targets being drawn on our fellow CSO activists across the region. Latest developments across Western Balkans, but also the EU, however, are presenting a real danger to the already narrowed space for CSO action, preventing CSOs to fulfil their important role.

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    RACoP Stories: SCiDEV Success and Challenges when Practicing Dynamic Accountability

     

    In this blog post, Blerjana Bino, Executive Director of the Science and Innovation for Development Center (SCiDEV)  shares some of the ways organization implemented dynamic accountability. They believe that transparency and accountability are essential components of their work, and they strive to incorporate them into their practices in a variety of ways.

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    Hot July in Belgrade

     

    “The Corona virus has been defeated!”- these are the words that the authorities in Serbia used to address to their citizens, at the beginning of May, when almost all measures in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic were relaxed in order to continue the election campaign and the holding of parliamentary and local elections on 21 June. After the elections, the situation with the pandemic “suddenly” worsened in terms of the increasing number of new infected and dead people. Ironically, the authorities accused the irresponsible citizens for pandemic spread. In the meantime, there were doubts regarding the credibility of official data on the number of infected and dead persons in the country. Thus, the trust of citizens in the members of the Government’s Crisis Staff vanished. The announcement of Serbian President about the possibility of introducing a new curfew to bring the epidemic under control caused justified anger among the citizens, and it was the immediate reason for the several days of protests that followed.

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    Montenegro: Lost in Restrictions

    On 28th of February, the Government of Montenegro started implementing its first measure intended to combat the novel coronavirus epidemic by prohibiting flights from and to the north of Italy. From this day on, the Government will through the National Coordination Body for Communicable Diseases (NKT) publish a number of decisions that would amount to 83 measures and 19 recommendations usually adopted in late sittings of the now infamous body. However, as time has passed and as the danger from COVID-19 has been more worrying, so did the measures of NKT. In fact, the measures and the approach of NKT became more extreme and, according to many, more authoritarian. These new behaviors, show us how fragile the democratic system really is and should force us to create preventive mechanisms for misuse of it in any future crisis.

     

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    Enabling Environment in the Western Balkans and Turkey: Growing Pressure on Civil Society and Future Challenges

     

    On 10 December 2019, the world celebrated the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through public gatherings, press statements and social media campaigns, the media and the CSO activists in our region celebrated the 71st anniversary of the human rights day. Despite the fact that the Universal Declaration with its broad range of political, civil, social, cultural and economic rights stands for “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”, unfortunately the WBT region cannot testify for a comprehensive level of enabling environment for civil society. However, in the New Year, we hope for a more stable, thriving and enabling environments in the region, where the respect of basic freedoms will make significant progress, instead of the backsliding we have been witnessing. In the New Year, we want to see the start of a positive chapter in the decade that comes!

     

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    Get Talked About by Someone Who Everybody Talks About

     

    What is the secret of successfully influencing political decisions on burning issues by creating public pressure? You make those issues everybody`s issues!
    Let`s make one thing clear at the beginning. We are not talking about creating problems where there`s none, rather than finding ways to make your problem visible to the people outside of your community.
    Often, people are not lethargic or just “not interested” in current events. It is more likely that just do not share the same “news bubble” with you and do not have the same timely access to relevant information which might raise their concerns.

     

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  • Civil Society Role in Participatory Democracy in Times of COVID-19 in The Balkans

    The Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN) and European Center for Not-For-Profit Law (ECNL) organized a joint online conference on 13 July 2020 about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the public participation in the region, and the ways to promote participatory and multi-stakeholder approaches in the relief of the crisis. The conference gathered more than 25 participants to discuss how to enhance civil society’s involvement in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, together with the two keynote speakers: Anna Rurka, President of the Conference of INGOs at CoE, and Paul Maassen, Chief, Country Support at Open Government Partnership (OGP). As the conference delivered some though-provoking points, BCSDN and ECNL will deliver a series of blogposts on the topic, to explore them in more detail and to encourage further discussion on the topic.

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    CSOs Reflections and Lessons Learned from GAW 2020: On What Future We Can Hope?

    From 12-16 October, CIVICUS’s group of national network organisations (AGNA), celebrated Global Accountability Week 2020 with other CSOs around the world. Participants joined the online exchange activities focusing on accountability, transparency, and legitimacy within CSOs, many organized by AGNA members, working and advocating on greater accountability practices. Facilitators and participants from Skopje, Berlin, Montevideo, Washington, Zurich, Buenos Aires, and New Delhi discussed the digital age, in times of crisis, multi-stakeholder engagement, self-assessment mechanisms, etc. On the second day of GAW 2020, BCSDN led a session on CSO Accountability in times of COVID 19.

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    The Future of the Enlargement Process and Civil Society Support

    Not opening the negotiations for Albania and North Macedonia sent a clear message that there is a need to change the Enlargement process, but such a decision shows no regard to the citizens of these countries. The enlargement is not only a technical procedure, but it has a real impact on the people, and the citizens of the Balkan countries are the ones that are losing the most. Citizens of the Western Balkans, as future EU citizens, need to be able to participate in the future processes of the EU and therefore they should be involved in the Conference on the Future of Europe discussions.

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    Global Accountability Week Ends – Our Work is Only Beginning

    BCSDN celebrated the Global Accountability Week form the 1st till the 4th of October together with our counterparts on national level and with our partners on the global civil society scene. The Global Accountability Week seeks to gather civil society organizations around the world to promote how we are accountable to our constituencies but also aims to put the topic of accountability at the forefront of civil society development by promoting of our standard for work and ethics.

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