News and updates from BCSDN and the region
On 4th and 5th of February, in Belgrade, the Western Balkan CSOs Global Development Partner and Strategy Meeting took place. The two-day annual partner strategy meeting brought together CSO representatives of each partner country, in order to refine the strategy for implementation of the project, as well as to exchange information and enhance knowledge on
Read more →On 29th January, 2016, Smart kolektiv and CSR Forum launched the CSR Index – the first national platform for evaluating corporate social responsibility. The online platform was designed to recognize, reward, and promote good practices of responsible business in Serbia. The first indexing cycle will be open to companies in March 2016. Companies will have
Read more →The Conference: “Volunteering and Legislative Framework – good practices and EU standards” was organised by TACSO on 15-19 December in Montenegro to respond to the need for development of a legal framework that is favourable to volunteering in the Western Balkans. It aimed to hear the experiences of the neighbouring EU countries and was a
Read more →One of the core aims of CIVICUS is to tirelessly defend the fundamental freedoms of association and assembly that underpin the work of civil society – and it seems that civic space around Europe is under threat. In order to better respond to this changing environment, CICIVSU and the Civil Society Europe (CSE) platform conduct
Read more →This year, we are celebrating one of the most important anniversaries: The world’s core international human rights treaties are turning 50. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were both adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966. The ICCPR,
Read more →In consortium with Ariadne (the European Funders for Social Change and Human Rights) and the International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG), the European Foundation Centre (EFC) has published a report on Challenging the Closing Space for Civil Society, A Practical Starting Point for Funders. The report aims to provide grantmakers, private funders and other CSOs
Read more →Members of global civil society have come together to make the voices of people heard and to hold leaders to account on the commitments they have made, including the Sustainable Development Goals, and key commitments on financing and universal implementation. CSOs from across all regions, involved in current civil society initiatives and platforms active in
Read more →The Civil Society Scholar Awards (CSSA) support international academic mobility to enable doctoral students and university faculty to access resources that enrich socially engaged research and critical scholarship in their home country or region. The awards support activities such as fieldwork (data collection); research visits to libraries, archives, or universities; course/curriculum development; and international collaborations
Read more →The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) is launching its call for applications for the 2016 edition of the TRAIN Programme (Think Tanks Providing Research and Advice through Interaction and Networking) that seeks to foster a fruitful policy dialogue between think tanks and political actors in the Western Balkans. During a series of seminars, participants
Read more →The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda is lauded as a new universal agenda, different than anything that came before; an agenda aiming to address social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in an integrated way. However, major questions have been raised: How will the SDGs be implemented? How will the new agenda tackle old problems?
Read more →The Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy (MCFHRD) is the FCO’s dedicated strategic fund supporting our global human rights and democracy work. The FCO has reconfigured its human rights work around three interconnected themes that provide the basis of our funding strategy: 1) Democratic values and the rule of law; 2) The rules-based
Read more →In the framework of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) a Call for proposals has published to strengthen the capacity of CSOs for more effective action in the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Turkey. The Call is divided into two lots: 1) Strengthening civil society’s involvement in the making,
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