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Program Coordinator: Gulnura Mehdi
Mission
To bring together civil society actors beyond borders to share ideas, best practices, information, knowledge, expertise and learn new models of development; to coordinate the efforts for the development of open society through cross-border partnership; to stimulate cooperation among countries for strengthening conditions of open society; to more develop OSI-AF's strategy by using experiences of European countries.
Goals and objectives
- to support the international exchanges in promoting the open society agenda, including but not limited to human rights protection, free and fair election, globalization and information;
- to promote civil society engagement in developing European Neigbourhood Policy in Azerbaijan by bringing knowlege and expertise of the couintries- EU members via European Integration Subprogram facilitated within the East East program: Partnerhsip Beyond Borders
- to strengthen activities of NGOs in the regions of Azerbaijan through creating networks at the local and internationsl levels
- to strengthen conditions for public debates and public policy in promoting the open society agenda by using ICTs
Process/Implementation
- Identifying civil society organizations to develop international initiatives related to the open society agenda in Azerbaijan;
- Providing participation of the civil society actors from Azerbaijan in international exchanges facilitated within the Program.
In 2004-2005 we announced the competitions and developed projects in the areas below. We intend to continue working in these areas as well as to include some other areas below to develop projects in 2005-2006:
- Free and Fair Election Practice and Azerbaijan
- Human rights
- Democracy and European Integration
- Women’s and Youth Participation in the Democratization Processes
- Globalization, Modernization and Azerbaijan
Why are these areas?
- Free and Fair election Practice and Azerbaijan
Starting from 2002-2003 The East East Program: Partnership Beyond Borders main focus is election due to presidential election 2003, municipal election 2004 and forthcoming parliamentary election 2005. The initiatives are focused mainly on NGOs, youth and women’s participation in the election. The initiatives promoted creating the election coalition of NGOs, active involvement of women and youth in the election processes. The Women and Elections initiative started in 2003 and continued in 2004 was resulted in promoting partnership of women NGOs in this area and increasing women’s participation in the election as trainers and both as voters and candidates for the election. Eventually, 14 women-participants of the initiative became municipal members in Baku and the regions of the country.
- Human Rights
Azerbaijan joined the European Convention on Human Rights and in spite of this there didn’t occur serious changes in the field in the country. We started with the initiative Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association in 2001 and continued the development of this field focused on its various aspects as one of main factors of open society by implementing a number of the initiatives on human rights education from capital to the regions of the country. The initiatives were resulted in preparing the human rights trainers in Baku and the regions and active involvement of human rights activists in human rights protection after the election of 2003.
- Democracy and European Integration
Since Azerbaijan joined the European Neighborhood Policy it’s important to raise public awareness about the challenges and opportunities of European Integration, to invigorate public discussion and dialogues related to the role of Europe in democratization processes as well as to mobilize the civil society and the public to participate in the process of the development of the Action Plan for Azerbaijan via civil society partnership in integration processes. Since Moldova and Ukraine have already agreed with the EU on Action Plans and Azerbaijan and Georgia will start negotiations this September it will be useful for GUAM countries civil society actors to meet to discuss the new neighborhood processes and the possibilities to leverage and share experiences between new EU members and GUAM countries.
- Women’s and Youth Participation in the Democratization Processes
In order to strengthen the youth and women’s participation in the democratization processes in Azerbaijan The East East Program: Partnership Beyond Borders has supported a number of youth and women’s exchanges. The program will continue this area as these initiatives promote youth and women leadership and specifically help youth NGOs in the regions of the country to develop their strategies and their organizational structures through building up partnership with youth partners abroad and thus, to see how youth build their work in European countries. These experiences are being disseminated to other local NGOs in the country via trainings or workshops they hold as follow-ups.
- Globalization, Modernization and Azerbaijan
In broad meaning, there is a need to raise public awareness on globalization issues: impact of globalization on national economies; globalization and mass media; globalization, democracy, religion and human rights through cross-border partnership of civil society actors. In Azerbaijan for the last few years there is a threat of using of a religion to gain political goals. The civil society actors can make a contribution to this via developing partnership with the neighboring countries to discuss the role of religion in modernization and globalization processes in today’s world.
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