Deepening the Roots of Civil Society in Ukraine. Findings From an Innovative and Participatory Assessment Project on the Health of Ukrainian Civil Society A PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE CIVICUS INDEX ON CIVIL SOCIETY PROJECT IN UKRAINE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Coalitions of Civil Society Organizations in Ukraine: Role, Types, and Impact. PREPRINT
Demokratizatsiya The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 2024
The pace of reforms in young democracies frequently depends not only on the political will of state authorities, but also on how strongly domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) make a stand for democratic change. This study examines the coalescing practices of Ukrainian CSOs, which come together to propel issues of public importance onto the agendas of the national government or local governments. The paper develops a typology of diverse coalitions and provides examples of the impact of different types of CSO alliances on democratic developments in Ukraine over the last two decades. The article concludes that CSO coalitions in Ukraine might be seen as informal institutions with functional and problem-solving roles due to their ability to restore the balance of power between state and civil society and benefit participatory decision-making.
THE JOURNAL OF V. N. KARAZIN KHARKIV NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, 2019
The financial viability is one of the most important element in achieving sustainability for a civil society, especially in post-Socialist states of the Eastern and Central Europe. Despite positive assessments of the role and potential of civil society in Ukraine from scholars and analysts and comparatively high score of civil society organizations’ sustainability index taking in comparative perspective for a whole region, its financial capabilities remains its weakest part during decades of Ukrainian independence. Having comparatively friendly legal and political environment and achieving some impressive results in advocacy, building coalitions and networks and enhancing its organization capabilities Ukrainian CSOs still remain dependant from international donors. Some shifts in financial resilience of civil society demands not only efforts from its side, but finding a consensus with a state on the model to achieve. Three typical models of interrelations by civil society and government, emerged in contemporary Europe are provided, they could be distinguished based on the social and political role of CSOs and their functions in public services provision. These models based on the scales of institutionalization and level of independence of civil society relatively to the authorities and include Social-democratic (Scandinavian), Liberal (Anglo-Saxon) and Corporativism (Continental) types. Ukrainian civil society, regardless achievements in organizational capacities and sectoral infrastructure, still remains in the «emerging» transitional spot due to the extremely small amount of public funds it attracts and based on uncertainty of its role on national and local level. Perspective destinations for civic-state dialogue are emphasized, among which there are finding the consensus of desired model and adopting new National Strategy of Stimulation Civil Society in Ukraine for next five years, changes in legal framework for local self-government, social entrepreneurship, taxation of charity and means earned by CSO themselves and establishing new practices and institutions for public financing of CSOs on national and regional levels.
The article highlights the results of the annual work of the project team on the formation and practical implementation of the system of measuring the index of human rights implementation at the local level. The article's findings suggest the international community a fundamentally new product in the field of civil control over the activities of local authorities-a mechanism for the human rights certification of the regions, which was tested in Ukraine. Its working version is the result of the joint diligent work of the UHHRU, the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, human rights activists, the international expert environment. The developed mechanism allows assessing the activities of local authorities in the field of human rights protection through a flexible system of objective indicators. The developers took into account the reform of decentralization, which is taking place in Ukraine since 2015. Previously the high centralization of state power in Ukraine contributed to the approval of such a view. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, bodies of local self-government can provide both as a violation of human rights and prevention of such violations. The reform of decentralization further enhances the role of local self-government in respect for human rights. Therefore, the current focus of the activities of non-governmental organizations is gradually becoming the so-called "landing" of human rights to the level of local communities, with the goal that human rights have become a valuable basis for building a relationship at the local level. This means that the responsibility of local authorities towards communities will be increased, and communities, in turn, will participate in monitoring the activities of local self-government in terms of observance of human rights. In pursuit of such a challenge, the research goal of the authors was determined-to propose a tool for assessing the quality of activities of local authorities in the state, based on criteria of approaches to the realization of human rights. The following steps were taken in this article: the original classification of human rights, which takes into account the approaches of international organizations and based on "human rights certification of the regions" has been selected; practical algorithm for the search and evaluation of all human rights groups in the activities of local authorities was provided; the mechanism of interaction with the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in monitoring human rights was worked out.
Assessing and Strengthening Civil Society Worldwide
… Description of the CIVICUS, Civil Society …, 2008
This paper outlines the project design of the CIVICUS Civil Society Index, initiated in 1999 by the international civil society alliance CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Over the past five years, a large number of individuals and organisations have contributed to the project's development. CIVICUS Secretary General and Chief Executive Officer, Kumi Naidoo, came up with the initial idea of a Civil Society Index in 1999 and has, since then, constantly provided strategic guidance and advice to the CSI project as well as to me personally, for which I owe him much. Professor Helmut Anheier developed the initial research framework, known as the Civil Society Diamond, which is still at the heart of today's CSI. Then, in 2000/2001, during the CSI's pilot phase, the national partners brought the project to life in their countries and provided useful input to the subsequent evaluation phase. During the redesign phase, Carmen Malena worked with me on revising the CSI's methodology and approach and significantly shaped its design. The results of this truly collaborative and highly enjoyable effort on the CSI redesign , which took the form of three week-long face-to-face sessions and countless phone calls between a small German town and a village near Quebec City, Canada, are presented in this paper. Since 2002, the CIVICUS CSI Team, together with our national partners in 61 countries, have turned the abstract letters and numbers of the CSI documents into an engaging hands-on initiative. The immense drive of the CSI Team and the national partners bodes well in making the project a groundbreaking initiative on participatory civil society assessment and the strengthening of civil society.
State of Civil Society Report 2016.pdf
The State of Civil Society Report studies civil society development in Russia and four EU-countries: Germany, Spain, Poland and Hungary. Two major aspects were studies during the research: the perception of the most important challenges for CSOs and the best practices developed by them to respond to these challenges. Results indicated that for CSOs in all the countries the biggest challenges are financial, although to various degrees and for different reasons. In Spain, it comes mainly as a consequence of the economic crisis. In Germany, previously stable state funding is now being reduced. In Hungary and Poland, the government is hindering access to EU funding. In Hungary and Russia, the state creates barriers for CSOs receiving foreign funding. In all countries, CSOs see a reduction in traditional financial sources and face a need to find new sources of funding. The survey and the interviews highlighted organizational challenges and the need for better communications, including the use of social media and information technologies. CSOs under pressure intensify their work with garget groups and volunteers and seeks more public support.