BCSDNs member, the Centre for Information Service, Co-operation and Development of NGOs (CNVOS) from Slovenia, has recently started a media campaign to encourage Slovenian citizens to donate it 0,5% (#nulapet) of income tax to CSOs. The aim of the campaign is to encourage citizens, 60% of which do not donate 0.5% tax, and by doing this, allow over 5 million EUR to go to the state budget, and remain unallocated to such organizations. This model promotes direct citizens support to CSOs by donating 0.5% of their income tax to any organization they support, and by doing so, they are making organizations…
Author: anja
The Civic Solidarity Platform (CSP) – a network of over 80 human rights NGOs from Europe, the former Soviet Union, and North America – organized the 7th OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference in Hamburg on 6-7 December 2016, ahead of the annual OSCE Ministerial Council meeting taking place in this city on 8-9 December 2016. The event gathered more than 100 participants with the aim to discuss the concerning trends with human rights in the OSCE region and adopted a set of Civil Society Recommendations to OSCE participating States, institutions, and field offices, as well as the Hamburg Declaration on…
Together the European Union and its Member States provide over 50 % of all global development aid, making them the world’s largest donors of official development assistance (ODA). In 2015, the EU’s collective ODA amounted to EUR 68 billion. As one of the oldest external activities of the European Communities, development policy was originally focused on former colonies of Member States; but it now covers some 160 countries around the world – whilst also putting strong emphasis on support to the poorest countries. Today’s EU development policy is guided by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed at United Nations…
How will the US development cooperation look like under the next administration? USAID is still waiting for the transition team and no one knows who will make up Tramp’s landing team. Officials expected that the new administration would arrive last month, and that a bulk of the transition effort would be spent on in-person briefings with the incoming administration. The two months between the election and inauguration are critical to a smooth transition between administrations. A large portion of USAID’s leadership — as with other agencies and departments — are political appointees, and when they resign sometime before inauguration day,…
The regional expert meeting was organized by a core group of the Global NPO Coalition on FATF in London on September 21, 2016. The goal of the meeting was to address the evaluation process from a government, nonprofit and FATF perspective in light of the recent revision of FATF Recommendation 8 (R8) and its Interpretative Note (IN). The outcomes of the October workshop ECNL co-organized on the effective implementation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards on nonprofits are now available. The new resource paper presents the main points and takeaways from the discussions as well as provides further recommendations. Source: ECNL
The project partners of the Global Standard for CSO Accountability met from the 5th-8th of December in Uganda to finalize the Standard content and further develop the outline of the Guidance document that will support the use of the Standard. The Standard was discussed in the context of the shrinking civic space internationally, but also through the other global processes taking place at the moment especially, the SDGs. After the first round of consultations held in the regions covered by the partners, including BCSDN, the partners worked on improving the content of the standard but also decided on developing an…
BCSDNs member, the Centre for Information Service, Co-operation and Development of NGOs (CNVOS) from Slovenia, has recently started a media campaign to encourage Slovenian citizens to donate its 0,5% (#nulapet) of income tax to CSOs. Anyone who pays income tax can donate its 0.5% of income tax to over 5.000 CSOs in the country, including voluntary firefighters, humanitarian, animal rights, local sports and cultural organizations. The aim of the campaign is to encourage citizens, 60% of which do not donate 0.5% tax, and by doing this, allow over 5 million EUR to go to the state budget, and remain unallocated…
On the occasion of the partnership meeting to take place in Kampala, Uganda this week, partners of the Global Standard for CSO Accountability met civil society representatives and activists from East African countries on the 5th of December. The meeting served as a platform to present the Global Standard, initiative in which BCSDN is a partner, to local organizations and to connect this initiative to global trends such as the shirking civic space around the world. The agenda 2030 and the SDGs were also discussed in order to connect the Standard to the global processes and see how it can…
The Western Balkan countries do not have an advocacy strategy aimed at the relevant target groups in the EU. The Advocacy Strategy for the EU Integration of the Western Balkans – Guidelines (ASWB), developed by eight Western Balkan and Visegrad Group think tanks, is the first initiative of the kind. This document aims at supporting and facilitating EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. the Guidelines argue that the key impediments are to be confronted through joint advocacy endeavors. They propose that a civil society coalition (the WB6 Advocacy Group) leads on the development of the regional strategy and coordinates its…
Europe has seen a surge in recent years of support for populist and nationalist movements – from Spain to the UK to Turkey. The reasons are manifold and complex, but are driven to a large degree by the belief that traditional democratic institutions. For example, Citizens from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania are the most likely to think that their members of parliament are highly corrupt. In these countries, over a half or more say that their representatives are very corrupt. Serbia is seen as one of the few who has the most severe corruption problems. Over 65% of…