As a part of the continuous advocacy efforts by global non-profit (NPO) coalition, 123 organisations from 46 countries signed a letter calling on the FATF to open a process to revise Recommendation 8 in order to minimize future missuses. FATF’s standards, combined with country compliance evaluations, have led to a growth of restrictive regulations for non-profits around the world and contributed to banks refusing services to NPOs. The global coalition of NPOs, spearheaded by ECNL and partners, protests against FATF’s unproven assumption that the entire NPO sector is particularly vulnerable to terrorism financing abuse. The initiative is supported by a…
Author: anja
Half the money the European Union spends on aid is wasted, stolen or held up by incompetence, a report has warned. The study by MEPs responsible for auditing EU spending found that GBP 11.5 billion (approx. EUR 15 billion) of the GBP 23 billion (approx. EUR 30 billion) doled out by Brussels each year fails to achieve its stated aims. Ingeborg Graessle, chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on budget control, said the EU was ‘effectively throwing money down the toilet’ and called for a wide-ranging review of the way Brussels spends aid money, since more than 900 aid projects worth…
The field of international development cooperation is undergoing tectonic shifts, with new nodes of decision-making and resources emerging alongside existing institutions. A paper by the UN University Center for Policy Research concentrates on two recently established institutions, one primarily regional and the other essentially transregional: the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). The key point is this: in order to maintain its relevance in the field, the United Nations must harness its convening power and boost its legitimacy as agenda-setter, so as to foster a clearer division of labor with development financing institutions, particularly…
On 26th-27th January, representatives of FPA (Framework Partnership Agreement) project partners met in Brussels to discuss sustainability of their actions and to brainstorm about recommendations to DG NEAR for supporting the sustainability of project outcomes. The conference, organized by the TACSO Regional Office was attended by representatives of DG NEAR and around 85 representatives of civil society organizations participating in the 18 FPA projects. During the first part of the conference brief sustainability overview was presented for each project. Our Project Manager, Ilina Neshikj presented the key outcomes from the Balkan Civil Society Acquis project, and the main possibilities and obstacles to…
The latest MAXCAP paper investigates the process of judicial reform in Turkey in the last 15 years, with a focus on the reversal of such reforms since 2013. To do so, it asks whether and to what extent these reforms as well as their changing pace and direction have been driven by the political conditionality of the EU and its credibility, on the one hand, and the domestic costs of adaptation, on the other. While the European Union accession process mattered greatly for the Turkish political transformation, it has been by no means the sole determinant of political changes. There…
On 25th January in Brussels, BCSDN organized a meeting with European Commission’s officials working on civil society in Enlargement and Neighbourhood countries with the aim to share its experience with monitoring the enabling environment in practice. Tina Divjak, BCSDN Board member, presented to the EC officials the Monitoring Matrix methodology and its complementarity with the EC Guidelines for Support to Civil Society. The purpose of this training was to build a common understanding about the scope and content of CSO enabling environment (EE) and indicators that can define it, but also it aimed to get overview of the EE monitoring…
In the framework the efforts to strengthen the capacity of local CSOs for monitoring and advocacy in the areas essential for the functioning of civil society, covered by the Monitoring Matrix and the EU Guidelines for Support to Civil Society in Enlargement Countries, 2014-2020, BCSDN and Civic Initiatives have supported two organizations in Serbia in the development of policy papers in the area of transparent funding in Serbia. The Centre for Development of a Democratic Society – Europolis published the analysis “Budget Line 481 – To improve the processes of monitoring and evaluation” (in Serbian only), aiming to address the need…
Active Participation in Civil Society: International Standards, Obstacles in National Legislation and Proposals Report is published by TUSEV within the scope of Strengthening Civil Society and Civil Society Public Sector Dialogue Project that is funded by European Union and Turkish Republic, and determines the legal obstacles against the enabling environment for civil society in Turkey and introduces proposals for amendments. The report is composed of three major parts. The first part evaluates the Turkey’s Constitution’s compatibility with the international standards on freedom of association, while the second part analyzes the interconnectedness of freedom of association with freedoms and rights like…
Partners Albania has launched its newly designed website. The new design and features make navigation and information finding easier for visitors. Visit their new website to find the latest information and news about PA’s programs, planned and past activities, publications, and a visual gallery featuring their work. Partners Albania also published their latest 58th edition (December 2015) of the quarterly newsletter “Toward a Sustainable Society” which presents the activities, programs, achievements of Partners Albania .
The FP7 project in which BCSDN is partner in – “Maximizing the integration capacity of the EU” – MAXCAP had its final conference from 22-23 January 2016 in The Hague. The conference was organized by one of the MAXCAP co-coordinating partners, the Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs. The conference brought together prominent academics, policy makers, civil society representatives and the broader public to discuss and reflect on the key findings on the effects and prospects of EU enlargement and discuss their policy implication across member states and enlargement countries. The conference was organized in four thematic sessions,…