East Europe Marching Ahead
– wants more cooperation with the West and the South

As the EU expands, Eastern Europe, too, gets drawn more strongly into international development cooperation. Former recipients becomes donor nations, aid administration is established and built up and voluntary organisations are drawn into aid, development politics and development education.

09.19.2008

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- Are we on the right track?, was the question the organisations asked themselves in Prague in May, and in June development education and awareness raising was on the agenda at a conference in Ljubljana. There Slovenia, holder of the EU presidency, also played host to a meeting of new and old donor EU countries to discuss experiences, trends and challenges for the new member states in Eastern Europe.

- Are we on the right track? This was the main question discussed by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from Eastern Europe at the Trialogue Conference in the Czech capital Prague in the middle of May (read more here). The conference arranged a dialogue between "East", "West" and "South" and in addition to a number of representatives from Eastern European CSOs, colleagues from Western Europe and the South took part. The conference was meant to contribute towards a paradigm review by CSOs as development actors. In this work Eastern European CSOs consider themselves novices who would gladly learn from their more experienced colleagues (in the West and the South).

Šimon Pánek from the organisation People in Need is director of the board of the Czech umbrella NGO FoRS, that was one of the organisers. In his introduction he said, among other things (read more here):

"We meet more experienced colleagues here, and, by way of introduction, I would like to point out that our situations are very different. We are trying to board a train that has been riding the rails for 30 to 40 years. We are trying to learn while increasing knowledge (of development issues.[ed.remark]) not only in society in general but also among politicians in the new member states, because, only a couple of years ago, there were only a few people who knew the difference between humanitarian aid and development, development theory and so on."

The conference report, now available, begins by quoting some of the issues raised there (read more here).

"Should we follow the logic of economic growth or that of development? Do we want more, or do we want to live happier lives? Is democracy a precondition for development? Are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) a disgrace? What global roles do China, India and Brazil play? Do we combat the causes of poverty or its symptoms?"

In addition, the report summarises a number of ideas to follow up at next year’s conference. Among these are:

Find new development objectives beyond the MDGs from CSO side and overcome MDGs; lobby for rights based approach.
Civil Society Organisations’ own responsibility: more thorough reflection and more specific, practical steps.
Change of geopolitics: breaking the taboo of differentiatied treatments between developing countries. How to react to the impact of new emerging powers on developing countries?
Engage in more and new awareness raising for global fairness; promote well-being; strengthen global education.

A Year of European Consensus on Development Education

It is precisely the effort to strengthen development education and awareness raising that was on the agenda for a conference in Ljubljana the following month, arranged by the Slovenian umbrella NGO SLOGA, in cooperation with, among others, DEEEP, an NGO network within the EU system that works with development education issues. The conference was the third in a series of such conferences, arranged in connection with the host country holding the presidency of the EU.

The previous conference, in Helsinki in 2005, took the initiative to draw up a European consensus on development education: The European Consensus on Development: the contribution of Development Education & Awareness Raising, which was launched last autumn. The conference in Ljubljana this summer showed that since then this document has become a common reference document within the EU, which has made the document available in all the languages of the union (read more here).

Among the themes that were taken up at the conference was cooperation with the South. Here advisor Knut Hjelleset from RORG-network took part as a resource person (read more here). So, too, did South African Stiaan van der Merwe, who in 2002-2003 completed an evaluation of RORG-network in Norway (read more here). Van der Merwe was one of the keynote speakers. Among other things he said (read more here):

"I am not a “global player in DE”. Neither am I presenting “the ultimate or only view from the South”. I would however urge you to consider the South as a global player in the DE work you are doing in Europe. The South is not just a resource for finding interesting methods for doing DE. The South should also be essentially involved in the shaping, practicing, monitoring and evaluation of the DE work you are doing here."

This was one of the challenges raised at the conference that was picked up in one of the nine conference recommendations (read more here):

"All Development Education practitioners should establish mechanisms for effective participation by actors from the South in all elements in the project cycle for educational measures, including planning, funding, implementation, monitoring and evaluation."

Eastern Europe: from recipient to donor

The increasing activity among civil society organisations in Eastern Europe is closely linked to many of the new member states in the EU becoming donors, whereas they were previously recipients. The experiences, tends and challenges of this development were themes at another conference in Ljubljana at the beginning of June (read more here). The conclusions of the final report from the conference show that there were three cases that stood out during discussions (read report here):

ODA (aid) should be approached strategically,
new member states have not yet found out how they can cooperate with other donors and
development education about development policies must be elaborated

Among the new member states that have come furthest in their work as a donor is the Czech Republic. Last year OECD/DAC completed a special review of the republic’s aid and recommended, among other things, that several of the obligations in the Paris Declaration should be followed up (read more here).

Useful links:

CONCORDE, the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development
DEEEP is a programme initiated by the Development Education Forum of CONCORDE that aims at strengthening capacities of to raise awareness, educate and mobilise the European public for world-wide poverty eradication and social inclusion.
Trialogue is a project to raise awareness of development issues in the enlarged EU.
DAC Special Review of the Czech Republic's Development Co-operation, OECD/DAC 2007

Conferences in Eastern Europe in the summer of 2008

Are we on the right track? Paradigm Review by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) as development actors, 14-16 May, Prague, The Czech Republic