Within the project ”Civil Society for Good Governance and Anti-Corruption in Southeastern Europe – Capacity building for monitoring, advocacy and awareness-raising” supported by the European Union, were organized meetings, conference and workshop in Belgrade, May 21-24th. The representatives of Institute alternative, Dina Bajramspahić and Marija Popović, attended the meeting of SELDI network’s Managing Board, SELDI policy networks opening conference and workshop, as well as at the conference of the European Commission, “EC and CSOs: Growing Together – A framework for partnership agreements”.
At the meeting of the SELDI network’s Managing Board on Tuesday, 21 May 2013th, representatives of 17 partner organizations discussed the SELDI Strategy and Action Plan. SELDI’s Strategy defines the mission and goals of the SELDI Coalition until the end of 2016th, and the specification of the network’s activities until the end of 2014. These strategic documents will be reviewed in the second half of 2014. They also discussed a number of questions about project menagment and reporting on the European Commission activities, also presented the plans for the establishment of the international Advisory Board of the Coalition.
Draft Strategy and Action Plan of the SELDI network can be found here.
On Wednesday, 22 May was held the Introductory conference and the SELDI network’s Policy Workshop “Main challenges of corruption and measures for fighting it” with a focus on four topics within 3 panels and a discussion:
- Anti-corruption strategies and institutions in Serbia and South East Europe
- Transparency of public finances: Corruption and anti-corruption in public procurement and public finances
- Monitoring of the corruption and anti-corruption measures: role, capacity and integrity of the civil society,
- Discussion: Perspectives on improving intergovernmental dialogue – civil society at regional and national level in the tackling corruption context.
Dina Bajramspahić, IA’s policy analyst, had a presentation in the second panel on “Corruption in public procurements in Montenegro.” She presented the key findings of IA research projects in the field of public procurement with particular reference to the risks of corruption.
During 23 and 24 May in Belgrade is also a conference by the European Commission and Civil Society: Growing up together – also preliminary conference about Framework partnership agreements under the program of support to civil society (CSF). The conference was organized by the European Commission (DG Enlargement), the Government of the Republic of Serbia, through its Office for Cooperation with NGOs and TACSO office in Serbia (Technical Assistance for Civil Society).
The two-day conference was attended by 200 representatives of civil society organizations that are partners in 18 projects supported by the European Union under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA CSF) for civil society organizations of the Western Balkans and Turkey. At the conference were presented key elements of the Strategy and action plans of supported projects so that partners could have the opportunity for collaboration and networking with the aim of multiplying effects of activities within the project.
Topics that were discussed:
- Capacity building and efforts to provide analysis, advocacy and monitoring of key sector reforms at the regional and national levels
- Improving the environment for civil activism as well as public and civil society dialogue at the regional and national levels
- Increase the legitimacy, transparency and accountability of CSOs in the region.
