News and updates from BCSDN and the region
The annual Global Humanitarian Assistance Report is a leading resource for understanding financing for humanitarian crises globally. Following the new Sustainable Development Goals and World Humanitarian Summit, the report this year begins to set a baseline for measuring progress on the implementation of global commitments to invest in humanity in the years to come. People
Read more →The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) is committed to a set of principles to guide effective development cooperation and an inclusive multi-stakeholder engagement to implement commitments related to these principles. These commitments were agreed at the Fourth High Level Forum held in Busan, Republic of Korea, in November 2011. It was also agreed
Read more →The first European Civic Academy will look into the complex questions raised by citizens’ disenchantment, practice, and expectation with regard to democracy and in relation to the “democratic deficit” in Europe. The vote for Brexit is the latest illustration of the risk of the disintegration of the European project. For a long time now, democratic
Read more →The specific objective of this call for proposals are to: Increase the effectiveness of Serbian CSOs in undertaking initiatives focused on Chapter 23 and 24; to enhance regional cooperation and to strengthen the role of CSOs in the process of negotiations with the EU and policy monitoring. The overall indicative amount made available under this
Read more →Frontier research often generates unexpected or new opportunities for commercial or societal application. The ERC Proof of Concept Grants aim to maximize the value of the excellent research that the ERC funds, by funding further work (i.e. activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original ERC frontier research grant) to verify the
Read more →The 19th edition of the USAID CSO Sustainability Index Report, finds that the overall CSO sustainability in the Southern Tier (South East Europe) countries remained largely stagnant in 2015, with only one country –Macedonia- recording a change in overall sustainability as a result of the difficult political environment that restricts civic space. While not leading
Read more →BCSDN is organizing its annual debate on the state of the enabling environment in which civil society in Enlargement countries operates. The debate taking place under the working title: “Raising Standards, Declining Trends? Operating Environment for Civil Society in Enlargement Countries” is being organized on the occasion of the presentation of the 2015 Monitoring Matrix
Read more →In 2015, UNCHR, the UN Refugee Agency, counted 60 million people who were forced to leave their homes. Out of these 60 million, 20 million were refugees, according to the Refugee Convention of 1951. This is the highest number of women, men and children on the move since the Second World War. About 87 per
Read more →Typically associated with military campaigns, drones—the unarmed kind—are becoming an essential tool for civil society. From a bird’s-eye view, they are exposing the truth about everything from the size of demonstrations to the wealth illegally hoarded by corrupt political elites. More information is available here. Source: Open Society Foundations
Read more →The resolution 32/31 on civil society space (A/HRC/32/L.29) is intended to ensure access to justice, and accountability, and to end impunity for human rights violations and abuses against civil society actors. It also seeks to encourage member states to create and maintain, in law and in practice, a safe and enabling environment in which civil
Read more →With more and more governments narrowing space for dissent and activism, the UN has emerged as a key platform to air concerns about acute rights violations and develop protections for civil society and other vulnerable groups. The core freedoms that enable civil society to conduct its work are under threat across the world. A report
Read more →After the Cold War, our attempts to encourage independent media in transition states didn’t have the success we hoped. Could crowdfunding be part of the answer? Crowdfunding would offer ordinary people — many of them disgusted by the distortions of their state- or oligarch-controlled media — a source of information they could trust and feel
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