Tanja Hafner Ademi, Executive Director of BCSDN participated to this year’s edition of the Black Sea NGO Forum taking place from 8th to 10th December in Kiev, Ukraine in the panel devoted to the enabling environment for CSOs in the region. She presented the Monitoring Matrix developed by BCSDN in partnership with ECNL to an audience of 150 representatives of civil society from 11 countries of the Black Sea region as example of civil society shadow monitoring mechanism.
The 7th annual edition of the Black Sea NGO Forum, which is for the first time taking place outside Bucharest is discussing a new strategic approach to make the Forum effective and define strategy for civil society engagement in the region. Currently, the Black Sea region is facing a set of challenges including security ones (conflict in Ukraine), so short-term cooperation is to be devoted to practical issues such as economic and social development. Issues arising from the enabling environment are a common concern in all countries, while more serious challenges exist in countries such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Turkey. Participants were interested in the Monitoring Matrix, esp. in how it was developed, what methodology was used and how it could serve as an example to develop similar monitoring mechanism for the region or individual participating countries.
The Powerpoint presentation about the Monitoring Matrix is available for download here.