On 23 February 2015 Radio Prague reported that a new centre designed to promote civic engagement in post-Soviet countries has formally begun operating in Prague. The Prague Civil Society Centre seeks to cultivate values such as openness and human rights in countries such as Belarus, Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. Download MP3 for the full interview by Dominik Jun with Rostislav Valvoda, head of the new centre.
Posts Tagged ‘NGO’
The new Prague Civil Society Centre explained
February 23, 2015Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights shortened to Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
December 18, 2014Discerning readers may have noticed in my latest post – on the change in Cuba policy in the USA – that the name of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights was different. Not an error on my part. The organisation has just changed its name to Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and also adopted a new logo:
The change simplifies the older title to focus on the organization’s core mission of partnering with human rights defenders in the field, educate students in the classroom, and engage the business community about issues of sustainability. The rebranding also extends across the Atlantic Ocean: Robert F. Kennedy Center Europe will now be known as Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Europe.
The rich history of the Asian Human Rights Commission in video
September 15, 2014On 11 September 2014 the Asian Human Rights Commission [AHRC] published a documentary telling the story of 30 years of commitment produced by Josefina Bergsten, which traces 30 years of work of the Asian Human Rights Commission and its sister organisation the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC). Both the AHRC and the ALRC are based in Hong Kong, and work in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China, in addition to its important role in regional institution building. As is to be expected in this kind of NGO film it contains quite a bit of ‘talking head’ (in particular the well-spoken Director Basil Fernando) but on the other hand the human rights movement has so little in visual memory and the richly illustrated stories told by Basil are so persuasive that it is a 50 minutes well spent for those who want to know more about the development of the human rights movement in Asia.
HURIDOCS adds interesting new board members to strengthen its technology aspect
April 23, 2014HURIDOCS General Assembly has recently elected a new board, adopted considerably revised statutes and reflected on five years of growth.
Current Board members Eddie Halpin (Chair) Hannah Forster (Treasurer), Agnethe Olesen and Rosario Narvaez Vargas, will be joined by the following new board members:
Gisella Reina (Italy, Netherlands) is an expert in institutional development. Currently, Gisella is Director Development and Donor Relations at the International Commission of Jurists. Before joining the ICJ in 2007, she was in charge of donor relations and development for ten years for NGOs specialized in emergency aid and food security. Prior to that, Gisella worked as an Economic advisor for various consulting and engineering firms, and as expert in evaluation of development programmes, and development of project planning capabilities. She holds a Master in Agricultural Economics and Planning from Reading University (UK), and has 25 years of work experience in project management and programming in various profit and non-profit organizations. She has lived in Italy, the Netherlands, UK, Pakistan and India and speaks Italian, Dutch, English and French.
Douglas Arellanes (United States of America) is a technology entrepreneur. One of the founders of Sourcefabric, Douglas is an American expatriate who has lived in the Czech Republic since 1992 (though he claims Dakar has the best music anywhere in the world and Cape Town the best scenery). Previous roles have included new media consultant for the Media Development Loan Fund, special projects director at Contactel, (a subsidiary of TeleDanmark) and co-founder of First Tuesday Praha, an organisation devoted to helping internet start-ups. When Doug is not translating some of the Czech Prime Minister’s speeches into English, he’s making households dance as a Saturday morning DJ on Prague’s Radio 1.
Alix Dunn (United States of America) is the co-founder and Creative Lead at The Engine Room where she designs programs and supports advocacy partners to integrate technology into their work. In the past she has acted as a program advisor and consultant for Tactical Technology Collective’s Evidence & Action and Privacy & Expression programs, the lead for trainings and partnerships at the SaferMobile program of MobileActive, and as a digital security trainer. Prior to this, she worked as program development officer at Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies working to incorporate technology strategies into advocacy programs, and as a media studies researcher. She has a master’s degree in media studies from the University of Oslo and a BA from Colorado College.
New board elected, statutes updated and looking back at five years of growth | HURIDOCS.
Due to lack of funding INTERIGHTS ceases to exist
April 4, 2014After 32 years, the NGO “INTERIGHTS” [International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights] ceases to exist as from 27 May 2014 due to lack of funding. This is bad news but at least there is a clear public statement. Too often human rights NGOs or awards are announced with great pomp but their demise is muffled. The Executive Director John Wadham made the following clear-headed statement: Read the rest of this entry »
the Crimea and Foreign Agents: a T-shirt tells it all
April 1, 2014As a result of the annexation of the Crimea, the Russian Procurator-General has found himself in a legal conundrum. The local NGO “Crimea Human Rights Centre” [CHRC] had for years militated in favour of the rights of the Russian speaking majority and insisted on the right to self-determination already in 2005 as the only way to secure their rights.
As the NGO receives funding from abroad (mostly from the Russian government but also from a rich businessman in Abkhazia), it had been forced on 2 February 2014 to register under the new Ukrainian “Foreign Agents law” [see my earlier post: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/ukraine-follows-russias-example-again-human-rights-defenders-labeled-as-foreign-agents/].
As a result, the members of the CHRC had even been forced to wear T-shirts with the text: “Foreign Agent”. With the integration of the Crimea, several staff members had stopped wearing the hated T-shirts but a certain, Aleksey Baburinko, one of the few Ukrainian human rights defenders left in the Crimea, lodged a complaint saying the CHRC still fell under the law on Foreign Agents, “either the Ukrainian or the Russian version”.
Today, 1 April 2014, the local Prosecutor’s office in Sebastopol issued a statement that wearing the T-shirts was no longer necessary but that the issue of registration would be referred to the new Russian Minister for Crimean Affairs, Oleg Savelyev, who has just been appointed.
Radio Prague: interesting interview with People In Need Director Simon Panek
March 28, 2014Since its foundation in the early 1990s, Prague-based People in Need [Člověk v tísni] has become one of the biggest NGOs in Central Europe. Founding member Šimon Pánek has for many years been the organisation’s director, and Ian Willoughby of Radio Prague did an lengthy interview with him on 24 March 2014. The conversation touched on targeting of aid, politics, international perception and plans for the future. It has become a most interesting interview that shows how in two decades a NGO in Central Europe can develop into a serious and mature organisation, still mostly local but with international potential. The transcript of the interview follows below:
I first asked Pánek what for him had been its standout projects of the last 20 years-plus “What was important was one of the very first projects, SOS Sarajevo, a big fund-raising campaign in the Czech Republic and relatively massive humanitarian aid into the besieged city of Sarajevo during the war. That was a formative period for us, for sure.
“The second important period I regard as when we were approached by students from Belarus and Cuban immigrants in the second half of the 1990s with a simple question: did you forget that we are not free yet?
“They said, you got your freedom, you got rid of the Communist regime, but we still have Lukashenko, we still have Castro – it’s a bit unfair to forget that we are in a bad situation.
(Šimon Pánek, photo: Štěpánka Budková)
“At that time we basically established the second department of People in Need, dealing with human rights, or supporting human rights defenders.
“The third pillar was established again at the end of the 1990s when in the North Bohemian city of Ústí nad Labem the mayor started to build a wall between a Roma settlement and the majority…”
This was the notorious Matiční Street.
“Yes, Matiční Street. And we were shamed. We were sitting around the table – I still remember the day – and one of my colleagues said, if we are able to operate in Chechnya, if we are able to do illegal work and support dissidents in Cuba, Burma, Belarus, we should be able to try to do at least something in such a shameful situation in our own country.
“So we started with social work at that time, and now we are running 10 offices around the Czech Republic with almost 200 employees working in 60 localities, dealing with social exclusion and all other connected things.”
Could we get back to the political activities of People in Need? You were saying that you support the opposition in countries like Cuba, Burma – do you have a kind of neo-conservative approach, where you’re trying to in a sense export democracy to these countries? Neoconservativism has been largely discredited politically, I would say.
“Yes, I absolutely agree that the word democracy was discredited, mainly through the Bush era.
“The push for more democracy with a really very simple approach – the more money I pour on the one side, the more democracy will appear the other – we never shared. We’ve never tried to push or export things.
“What we do is we try to support the people who are there in their activities, their interests.
“We do basically the same thing that same things that were done from Sweden, Britain, France, Germany – to a certain extent from the US as well, but mainly from European countries – during communism for [Czechoslovak] writers, intellectuals, dissidents.
“And I think to say ‘opposition’, it means we are supporting the political opposition – in the vast majority of situations that’s not true. We are supporting student groups that want to discuss the economy…”
But they want regime change.
“Some of them. Or regime improvement. They want to get freedom to travel, they want free access to the internet.
“Of course from the point of view of dictatorships or authoritarian regimes we are breaking some of their laws. But is the law legitimate if it deprives people of free access to the internet in the 21st century? I don’t think so.
“We are basically helping people to get very basic things that you and I can have here on any corner.
“What’s important is that if any change is going to happen and to be sustainable, it’s the destiny of the people there. If they can’t read books by Václav Havel or about the economy, or get access to the internet or even publish what they write, I think it’s unfair.
“We are basically helping them to overcome the obstacles and oppression which, in our opinion, illegitimate, undemocratic regimes are imposing on their own people.”
You mentioned Václav Havel. He was a great supporter of People in Need and of you personally – at one point he said that you could follow him as president some day. What did his backing mean to People in Need, especially internationally in terms of creating your profile?
Václav Havel, photo: Filip Jandourek
“Well, of course it was very important to have a person like Václav Havel here. We did not cooperate directly as much as it might appear – it was more of a convergence of the same principles, values and ideas.
“On the other hand, in some cases yes, we were carrying messages from Václav Havel to people in Burma, Cuba, East Timor, Chechnya.
“It was very important for the people to hear that we are coming from the Czech Republic and that Václav Havel is sending his greetings, whatever.
“Because his life was kind of a fairy tale for people living in unfree countries. And a big hope that if a powerless writer can win over a very strong regime, sooner or later freedom will come even to their countries.
“Internationally, yes it helped, probably. On the other hand, I think 20 years of work without any major mistakes or problems, high credibility among people, a few tens of thousands of stable supporters, I mean financial supporters which we have in the Czech Republic – these are important factors as well, of course.”
There are so many crises around the world and there are always fresh ones it seems – how do you decide which ones to target with aid?
“It’s a very good question, but of course it brings us back to the ultimate question – does this really make sense?
“We try to sit around the table and estimate critically if we are able to really make some change, if it’s reasonable in terms of the size of the crisis and in terms of the resources and capacities which we are able to generate here in the Czech Republic.
“If not, we often cooperate with our colleagues from Alliance 2015, which is eight organisations from Europe.
“If we are able to get together a few hundred thousand euros for a crisis, if it’s in one of the countries where the partner organisations are working, we just channel the money through them. Because there is no sense in spending the money on extra offices, cars, flight tickets.
“What we really don’t want to have is more flags on the map. Often less is more. To be focused and to really be able to achieve more and to go deeper in addressing the needs of the people and the causes of the crisis is more important than how many countries we are active in.”
Does the fact that People in Need comes from the Czech Republic influence how you are seen in different parts of the world?
“Absolutely. Coming from a small Central and Eastern European country has some advantages, but also some disadvantages. The disadvantages are that we really had to work hard to get on the mental map of big institutional international donors.
“The advantage is that we are not seen as having any other agenda. Still people coming from the US and strong Western European countries are… seen with greater suspicion.
“We come from a very small state without imperial ambitions, without really big influence. Basically people welcome us and I think they tend to trust us more quickly than NGOs coming from very strong countries with support from very strong governments.”
How would you like to see People in Need develop into the future?
“The last 20 years were interesting in one regard – we never made any plan as to how big we wanted People in Need to be, or how much money we wanted to turn over every year.
“We were always responding to needs which came from outside, humanitarian needs or the big floods in the Czech Republic, or issues connected with social exclusion, mainly of Roma people.
“It’s slightly changing, because we are too big to just respond. We are discussing more and more some new fields.
“The staff is getting older, including us in the management, which is probably good for the stability of the organisation.
“What I’ve seen during the last few years and what I think is extremely interesting and extremely important is that we are kind of materialising into systemic objectives our experience and cumulative knowledge from concrete work with beneficiaries in humanitarian development, social work, education.
“So while continuing with direct work we are more and more dealing with governments, inter-governmental bodies, coming with different suggestions, procedures.
“We are trying in different fields, like debt issues among the socially weak part of the population in the Czech Republic, to bring in education, some system improvements.
“This is a new ambition – not just to help people do concrete things which are making some change, but trying to address the causes, not just the symptoms but the causes of different problems.
“This is mainly in the Czech Republic, because you can hardly address the causes of the wars in Africa from our level. But in the Czech Republic our systemic work, policy work often, is more and more important. We are basically trying to improve how the state, how the system works.”
Latest photo evidence of harassment of Odhikar in Bangladesh
February 11, 2014Just now I received – via HURIDOCS – from the Odhikar Team in Bangladesh this update: “Today, 11 February 2014, at around 12:30 in the afternoon, the man who drives Saira Rahman Khan’s car, [Adilur Rahman Khan is Secretary of the human rights NGO Odhikar], received a phone call from 01822924228. The man who called him said he was Sub-Inspector Shahid from the intelligence agency. He told the driver that he must give him regular updates on Adilur Rahman Khan’s whereabouts. The driver said that he did not work for Adilur Rahman Khan and did not know where the latter went everyday and he could not give that kind of information. The man hung up. After that at 12:57 the same man, from a different phone number (01678046854) called the driver again and threatened him that if he did not give the information he wanted, he would face grave physical harm. The driver went to Odhikar and told the fact finders that he feared for his safety.”
With this message, the Odhikar Team attached the photograph (below) of members of the intelligence agencies in the lane outside the Odhikar office. Notice that the motorcycle has no license plate, which is apparently rather typical for the intelligence agency. Read the rest of this entry »
Office of NGO ‘Alternative’ in Ivory Coast attacked again
January 28, 2014
reports that on 25 January 2014 the office of LGBTI rights organisation Alternative in Côte d’Ivoire was attacked for the fourth time, and a security guard was hospitalised. The attack is the fourth such attack in one week, and follows previous threats. During the attack on the offices, laptops and desktop PCs were stolen and everything else in the office destroyed, including the electricity supply lines and emergency food supplies for people living with AIDS. It is reported that although members of the organisation called on the nearby police to help, the police did not come.
[On 20 January 2013, a mob attacked the home of human rights defender Mr Claver Touré, executive director of Alternative. For more information http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/24748]
Vacancy: Protection International looking for head of office in Kinshasa, RD Congo
January 27, 2014Protection International (PI) is looking for a Head of Office in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has been present since 2004, with a field office in South Kivu and soon in North Kivu. Must be French speaker. Deadline: 9 February. For more details see:
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 