News and updates from BCSDN and the region
The School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the European University Institute (EUI) is offering fellowships to early- and mid- career policy professionals for the academic year 2019-2020. The Policy Leaders Fellowship of the School of Transnational Governance provides a unique opportunity for policy professionals from around the world to further develop their policy work and
Read more →The Atlas Corps Fellowship is a 12-18 month Fellowship in the United States for the world’s top social change leaders. Fellows serve full-time at Host Organizations to develop leadership skills and learn effective practices through the Atlas Corps Global Leadership Lab professional development series and networking opportunities with other Fellows. Participants in this prestigious fellowship
Read more →The European Union has recently noted elements of state capture in the entire region of the Western Balkans. The term ‘state capture’ implies a state of widespread corruption in which the Government and public institutions are used, both through legal and illegal channels, to pump out public resources for private gain. The European Union has
Read more →The Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 25 September 2018 adopted the Decision on the Establishment of the Advisory Body of the Council of Ministers for Cooperation with Non-Governmental Organizations. The Advisory Body has five members that can be representatives of NGOs, academia, media and individuals with experience in developing, monitoring and implementing public
Read more →The proliferation of terrorist groups has turned violent extremism (VE) into a crucial concern in international politics. In facing this problem, states have advanced their national capacities and international actors have contributed to states’ efforts by financing state and non-state actors working in the process of countering VE. Similar to its neighbouring Western Balkan (WB)
Read more →NGOs were excluded from attending the opening and closing sessions of the OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting (MC) in the plenary hall and were not provided with an opportunity to follow the live broadcast of proceedings or to hold side events in Milano on 6 and 7 December 2018. For the first time ever, civil society
Read more →Free assembly is vital to democracy. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that authoritarian governments in Europe are restricting this right in illegitimate ways. In democratic societies, free assembly is one of the instruments by which people can bring about social change. There are some justified ways to put impositions on public
Read more →Open Government Partnership (OGP) was founded on the idea that public policy reform is better when government officials engage with civil society actors. Because of this, OGP cannot succeed without the ability of people to freely organize, participate, and communicate about policy. This is referred to as “civic space.” Yet, based on an analysis of
Read more →In light of the limited social movement literature, this paper aims to hypothesise the reasons why individuals in the Global South disengage from activism, making activism unsustainable over a lifetime. The paper analyses the reasons put forward by scholars to explain initial activist participation, inferring from this that four lenses are vital to utilise in
Read more →Over the past four years, CSIS has published more than 10 reports, both thematic and country-focused, to identify new programmatic models, broaden domestic constituencies, strengthen transnational solidarity, and align security and civic space. In addition to problem analyses, the reports provide examples and policy recommendations aimed at governments, donors, and INGOs as well as national
Read more →The aim of the Resilient Roots initiative is to test whether organisations who are more accountable and responsive to their roots – namely, their primary constituents – are more resilient to external threats from governmental and non-governmental sources. We believe that if civil society is accountable to and engaged with its constituency, it will be
Read more →Over the past several years, activists, CSOs and funders have been on the front-line of a growing number of attacks, facing threats, intimidation and more. FICS – the Funders’ Initiative for Civil Society – was founded in 2016 to create a more strategic response by private philanthropy to what has been labelled ‘closing civil society
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