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Less than one month left until the application deadline for the projects submitted within the Open Call Mechanism (OCM) - a succession format of the Subgrant Programme implemented in 2014-2015. Within the OCM, a competent jury shall select at least 7 projects, which will get between 8,000 and 30,000 euros each with the implemetation period varying from 6 to 18 months.
The eligible applicant must be a registered NGO - member of the Forum operating in partnership with one or more Forum members. The application team must include at least one member organisation from Russia and one member organisation from the EU. The OCM will support thematically diverse projects on cooperation and solidarity for civil society organisations, efforts to promote shared values in the EU-Russia dialogue as well as other topics consistent with the Forum's Mid-Term Strategy (2015-2018).
Applications and all related materials in English or Russian shall have been received until 20 January 2016, 10pm CET / 12am MSK. Applications and all inquiries shall be marked “OCM” and sent to opencall@eu-russia-csf.org.
For further information, please go here.
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STEERING COMMITTEE
New Members of the Steering Committee Elected in Budapest
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On 8 December 2015, at the 6th General Assembly of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum in Budapest, Hungary, the new strength of the Forum's Steering Committee (SC) was elected.
The Forum members re-elected three SC members - Yuri Dzhibladze (Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, Moscow), Anna Skvortsova (NGO Development Centre, St. Petersburg), and Natalia Taubina (Public Verdict Foundation, Moscow).
Three other members from the last SC strength stepped down - Katarzyna Batko-Tołuć (Citizens' Network Watchdog, Warsaw), Evgenia Chirikova (Environmental Defence of the Moscow Region, Moscow), and Stefan Melle (German-Russian Exchange, Berlin). Instead of them, the majority of votes was received by Elena Belokurova (German-Russian Exchange, St. Petersburg), Alexei Kozlov (Solidarity with the Civil Movement in Russia / Solidarität mit der Bürgerbewegung in Russland, Berlin), and Łukasz Wenerski (Institute of Public Affairs, Warsaw).
The new SC had the first online meeting on 21 December 2015 already. A personal meeting is planned for February 2016.
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WORKING GROUPS
Adress by the Working Group "Environment" to the 21st Conference of the UN FCCC in Paris
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Based on the articles 2 and 5-8 UN FCCC and with regards to the decision of the Forum of the Indigenous People on Climate Change (COP-6 Part 1, the Hague, 2000), the Statement of Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian NGOs on Climate (St.Petersburg, 13 November 2009), the Statement of Environmental NGOs (St. Petersburg, 2015), Manifest of the Civil Society in Support of Real Solutions on Climate (30 November 2015), and other documents we urge to include in the final COP-21 documents:
- To emphasise importance of the world forests as contributors to the mitigation of the anthropogenic influence to climate
- To view forests as not only absorbent of the greenhouse gases but also an important regulator of global climate change processes. In addition, forests are the ancestral habitat of indigenous peoples, who live close to nature and are the most vulnerable to climate change
- We are unanimous in saying that large hydropower dams and nuclear energy are not a solution to address climate change and should not be supported under the new agreement. We urge governments, financial, and other institutions not to include large hydropower and nuclear power stations in their initiatives for fighting climate change.
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WORKING GROUPS
"Different Wars": Exhibition Opened in Prague
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On 9 December 2015, at the International Conference "History versus Propaganda: Relating to the Past in Contemporary Russia", the ceremonial opening of the Exhibition “Different Wars” took place in Prague. The exhibition was composed by the Working Group "Historical Memory and Education" and funded within the Forum's Subgrant Programme 2014-2015 as well as by donors of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum.
The exhibition’s aim is to discover national history narratives from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia and discuss them in order to understand some of people's deeply rooted images and perceptions of the past.
In Prague, "Different Wars" were well received by academics as well as interested public. The visitors were discussing their own memories of historical narrations presented in the textbooks during their school years and the changes the WWII stories have undergone lately.
One of the topics of the following panel on education was how the current narratives have been constructed and used by the governments. Nikita Lomakin from Memorial International, a Working Group member, described the situation in Russia, where a unified history textbook is used to explain the past, and the problems connected to it.
Prior to the opening in Prague, the exhibition was presented on 1 December 2015 at an International Conference of historians in Vienna and introduced in an exclusive opening the next day in Berlin.
‘In 2016, our group will continue to work on developing methods for exhibition presentation and its promotion,' sums up Kristina Smolijaninovaitė, Project Coordinator at the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum and one of the Working Group Coordinators. 'We are going not only to show the exhibition but to connect this with events as well as discussions related to the topic. Now we have been searching for further partners. In particular, we are leading talks on further cooperation with the European Association of History Educators. It would be great to reach out to wider public circles and contribute with the exhibition to the dialogue on conflicting memory and beyond.’
The introduction video to the exhibition may be seen here.
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WORKING GROUPS
Report "Russian "Black Money" in the EU: Indicators of Transborder Corruption" Presented on the International Anti-Corruption Day
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Photo by the Hungarian Chapter of the Transparency International
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On the International Anti-Coruption Day being marked on 9 December 2015, the Expert Group "Fighting Transborder Corruption" of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum presented its new Report "Russian "Black Money" in the EU: Indicators of Transborder Corruption".
The presentation took place within the Anti-Corruption Festival in Budapest hosted by the Hungarian Chapter of Transparency International. At the conference within the Festival, both civil society activists and foreign diplomats as well as members of state and inter-state authorities including a representative of the Prime Minister of Hungary, the Prosecutor at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Hungary, the Strategy Director at the European Anti-Fraud Office, the US Ambassador to Hungary, and others.
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MEDIA
Dmitri Shevchenko (Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, Krasnodar, Russia): 'I am Motivated by the Thought that Our Activities Will Deliver Their Benefits Someday, Be It Even a Distant Future'
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To watch the interview in Russian please follow the link
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Dmitri, you have been working with the “Environmental Watch on North Caucasus”. This organisation became well-known before the Olympic Games in Sochi. Your important activities were restricted and even discontinued for a time-being. Has the situation improved as of today?
I would have loved to say that the situation has changed, but it is not true. Of course, we had great expectations that after the Olympic Games all that madness, which had happened in last several years in the course of the preparation process for the event, would pass, including the situation of crackdown on civil society in the Krasnodar Region. We believed that that wave would decline. But, unfortunately, a new madness came into play on the side of regional elites, which have been involved in the all-Russian campaign on fighting against the Ukrainian Maidan and integration of Crimea - and a new stage of pressure on the civil society started. Our organisation has suffered from that in full. Now we are monitoring construction works of the bridge over the Kerch Strait and experiencing a lot of various environmental disruptions. We faced with the fact that our authorities, including law enforcement ones, directly connect our activities on monitoring this project with the Crimea’s blockade and accuse us of playing into the hands of the Ukrainian government. There is a surveillance on us, when we go to the Temriuk Region, where the construction works are on-going. In other words, a new reason for the pressure on the Russian civil society emerged, which had not existed before. Now they are trying to put us in connection with political motives and activities and so on.
How hard is it to be inside of this confrontation? So, your colleague Suren Gazarian had to flee abroad. Another colleague of yours - Evgeni Vitishko - is still in prison, and it is not clear whether he would have been freed before the New Year. What is your forecast regarding Evgeni Vitishko?
Regarding Evgeni Vitishko, my forecast is more or less positive. But, unfortunately, the unfavourable moment is that all this 1.5-year campaign in support of Evgeni Vitishko, while he was imprisoned, had no effect. The progress happened only after the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights directly reported to the President on that situation. Vladimir Vladimirovich asked the Prosecutor General to handle this specific situation with this specific citizen. Only afterwards, the procedure was initiated via the power vertical to the court, where Vitishko’s lawyers appealed for a parole application and recommendation to mercy many times. Finally, the full mechanism turned over - and the decision on Evgeni’s freedom was made. And that is a really sad situation: Even on the international level, power of the civil society is nil, and only Vladimir Vladimirovich’s word improved the situation. And all that advocates’ work, international solidarity campaign in support of Evgeni Vitishko in various countries showed that all these practices didn’t work in Russia, unfortunately.
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