News and updates from BCSDN and the region
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
Read more →During the night between 21st and 22nd of January, unknown attackers have broken the windows of the Human Rights House (HRH) Belgrade. HRH reminds the public that attacks have been increasingly happening in Serbia towards representatives of institutions that are critical of the Government, representatives of the opposition parties, and now even human rights organizations.
Read more →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
Read more →Within the efforts to strengthen the capacity of local CSOs for monitoring and advocacy, two organizations from Serbia have developed policy papers in the area of transparent funding, with the support of the Balkan Public Policy Fund (BPPF), implemented by BCSDN and its partners (Civic Initiatives in Serbia). The Centre for Development of a Democratic
Read more →In Macedonia, within the Balkan Public Policy Fund, the civic association Konekt prepared an analysis of the public policies related to the environment for employment in CSOs. On 21st January, 2016, in the premises of Public Room, Skopje, the results of the analysis were publicly presented in front of more than 50 representatives of civil
Read more →78 CSOs from Macedonia addressed a letter to the whole international community requiring the implementation of genuine reforms as they are preconditions for free and fair elections. CSOs emphasized that, albeit the European Commission’s requirement from Macedonian authorities for fulfilling the urgent reform priorities and the experts’ recommendations that should have guaranteed free and fair
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →Although there is growing awareness in the development field of the need to better assess fragile states and customise policies to their particular needs, there has been limited progress in these areas. The new Country Fragility Assessment Framework, which systematically examines the societal and institutional sources of fragility, can help decision-makers make more precise diagnoses
Read more →The Montenegrin CSO Coalition By Cooperation to Goal (Saradnjom do Cilja) submitted the Draft Regulations of the Criteria, Standards and Procedures for Allocation of Montenegro State Property to CSOs, both to the Montenegrin Government and the Council for the Development of CSOs. The Coalition representatives emphasized that, throughout the years, numerous CSOs have been given
Read more →The Embassy of the Netherlands in Albania and the Albanian Institute of Science will host a #DiploHack on ‘A Voice for Civil Society – Using Open Data to Strengthen Civil Society Advocacy’. A #DiploHack combines the specific know-how and skill sets of NGOs, social entrepreneurs, tech developers and designers, and those of diplomats, journalists, academics,
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