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Civil Society in Albania

An address by AP executive director, Iain Guest, to the COMPASS conference in Tirana, Albania.

Over the last three years (2000-2003) the Dutch government has supported an ambitious projhect to strengthen local government and civic engagement in Albania. The project is called COMPASS (The Community and Public Administation Support Strategy). It has been implemented by three prominent Dutch NGOs - the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), the Netherlands organization for International Cooperation (NOVIB), and the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG).

COMPASS has focussed on five municipalities of Albania (Fier, Korca, Rreshen, Diber and Kruje). The first phase of the project came to an end in April, and on April 16/17, the three Dutch NGOs held a meeting in Tirana to review lessons learned, and also to plan for the follow-up. One lesson has already emerged: that a strong local government also requires a strong civil society. With this in mind, the conference organizers asked Iain Guest, Coordinator of the Advocacy Project, to reflect on AP’s experience with civil society in countries of transition, and provide advice to donors on how civil society can be strengthened.

The purpose of this meeting is to review some of the lessons from this last phase of the COMPASS project and also propose some recommendations for the next phase. I have been asked to talk about strengthening civil society.

It is now taken for granted that civil society has a crucial role to play in building peace and democracy, particularly in countries like Albania, that are in transition. I have been asked to step back and reflect on some of the work that I have done with civil society as an individual, and as a member of a non-profit group that I coordinate. This is called the Advocacy Project. We try and support advocates – particularly networks – that have strong roots in their communities, and help them to become better advocates. I propose to draw on some examples of civil society that we have worked with, focusing in particular on two other countries in the Balkans - Bosnia and Kosovo.

Bosnia: I went to Bosnia several times during the war, and conducted a survey of community-based civil society in Bosnia after the war for USAID. Today, our project is working with two Bosnian civil society initiatives that are trying to promote the return of refugees to the town of Srebrenica, which was the scene of a terrible massacre in July 1995. One of these is a network of NGOs. The other is an association of women weavers who lost relatives in the massacre. I visited Srebrenica two weeks ago to attend the first burial of victims from the massacre.

Kosovo: Our group went into Kosovo immediately after the 1999 war, to monitor the impact of foreign aid on civil society. Since then we have worked directly with the women’s group Motrat Qiriazi. (As you may know, this group was named after the Qiriazi sisters, who founded the first school for girls and set up the first women’s NGO here in Korca, Albania). We have also maintained close links to the Young Ecologists of Kosovo.

The Roma of East Europe: We are supporting two initiatives aimed at empowering the Roma of East Europe. One is training Roma activists in several East European countries in how to use information technology as an instrument of social change. We have also helped to establish a new network of Roma women activists from 18 European countries. These women activists are prominent in their own countries. They have decided to take their campaign to another, international level.

Palestinian civil society: We are developing ties with two Palestinian NGOs, in Beit Hanina and Ramallah. Civil society will be an indispensable player in any renewed peace process.

Women in Afghanistan: We are supporting a large network of Afghan women’s groups that is working to improve women’s rights on both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, this means lobbying for greater protection for refugee women and children. In Afghanistan, it means trying to ensure that women’s rights are protected by the new constitution.

Networks: In addition, the Advocacy Project is supporting several informal civil society networks. These have come together out of a common conviction that its members will have more impact if it can speak with one voice. I just spoke about the International Roma Women’s Network. Another network brings together women’s groups in Nigeria who have linked up with women’s groups in Italy to stop the trafficking of women from Africa to Europe. We have built a website for a network of indigenous journalists, who come together to promote indigenous issues in the United Nations. We have also helped to start a network of young AIDS activists in Africa, who are lobbying for young people to be given a greater voice in the campaign against AIDS.

Drawing on these examples, I propose to divide my remarks this morning into four sections:

• Some features of Civil Society
• Civil Society and Government
• The role of donors, and international NGOs, and how they can help civil society
• Conclusions and practical suggestions

1. Some Features of Civil Society

It seems to me that the people in this room face three challenges. The challenge facing donors is how to support civil society in Albania without imposing foreign ideas and practices - if civil society becomes too dependent on your help, it will collapse once you leave.

The second challenge faces those of you who are in government - you understand the civil society is your “partner” but can you also accept that it may have to criticize you and “hold you accountable”?

The third challenge faces those of you who represent civil society itself - how can you escape from your funding crunch and become financially self-sufficient?

The nature of these challenges might be easier to understand if we better understand the nature of civil society itself. As is evident from the conference literature, this has provoked considerable debate within the COMPASS team. Its members have spent a lot of time trying to come up with an appropriate definition of civil society.

Instead of focusing on definitions, I want to focus of some of the features of civil society which seem to me to be most relevant for this discussion – and for anyone who would seek to “strengthen” civil society.

1. Adversity is the best spur for civil society

My first point is that civil society thrives on adversity and need. Wilbert (the civil society expert in COMPASS) said yesterday that “genuine civil society” did not exist under Communism, except for the state-controlled Young Pioneers model. It is true that Marx detested civil society. But it is also true that Poland and Czechoslovakia produced two powerful civic movements, in the form of Solidarity and Charter 77, which sowed the seeds for the destruction of Communism in those two countries.

More remarkable, and much less studied, was the civil society that emerged across the border from here, in Kosovo, in the early 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, this had evolved into an alternative government and was providing 90% of the province’s services. It was remarkably efficient and well-organized.

It was also based largely on need. The Serbian government withdrew a whole range of essential services from Kosovo’s majority Albanian population in the early 1990s, so the Albanians had no alternative but to fill the gap. Was it political? Absolutely, in that it was held together by a common loathing of the Serbian government and largely organized around a political party (the LDK). But it also produced a remarkable range of democratic initiatives that were not political. One example was the province-wide network of support associations for handicapped people, known as Handikos. By the time of the war in 1998, Handikos had 320 volunteers working for handicapped people.

If the major formative influence on civil society in Kosovo was adversity and need, the same was true in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war. Bosnia was divided into besieged pockets, and pockets within pockets, by the war. Countless civic initiatives sprung up in these pockets. In the Muslim enclave of East Mostar, small radio stations were run off 12-volt batteries; classrooms were held in basements; food cooperatives were organized. This was civil society in action.

In the town of Zenica, women were driven to form a “Mixed Marriages Association” because their own families (from mixed marriages) were not entitled to receive humanitarian aid. (This was because aid was distributed in Bosnia according to religion). The Roma of Tuzla were another group that did not initially qualify for humanitarian aid. They, too, organized to demand aid – and got it.

As with Kosovo, these civil initiatives in Bosnia were driven entirely by the need to survive. By dint of taking the initiative, they were able to break the mould of dependency created by Communism. This produced a sense of confidence and self-reliance.

Bosnia was also interesting for the way that many associations which formed under Communism before the war continued to operate during the war and even attract members from different sides of the ethnic divide. It was particularly noticeable in Central Bosnia, where conflict broke out between Bosnia Croats and Muslims in 1993. Beekeepers associations, mountaineering clubs and teachers associations continue to provide services for Croat and Muslim members while the conflict raged. It was an example of the way community-based clubs and associations can unwittingly play a role in reconciliation.

Of course Bosnia and Kosovo were unique, and can’t really be compared to countries like Albania, which have made a peaceful transition from Communism to democracy. But the fundamental point seems to me to be valid everywhere: civil society comes from, and is generated, by adversity and need.

Take the new network of Roma women that I referred to earlier. Its members include one remarkable Gypsy leader form my own country, England, who is well over seventy. She wants proper housing for her people. One of her colleagues in the network is a 22 year-old Roma activist from Macedonia who wants to put an end to demeaning taboos which force young women to publicly prove their virginity on the eve of their marriage. The women of Srebrenica want to return to their homes. The Women’s Consortium of Nigeria wants to stop the trafficking of their daughters into prostitution. The Young Ecologists of Kosovo want to close down a power station that is dumping acid rain on their vegetables. The women of Afghanistan want to protect their daughters from forced marriage at the age of twelve.

And so it goes on. In each case, these people are driven to organize because they share an urgent goal that affects their lives. They are motivated. They have a cause. They are angry. They would still be angry if they never came into contact with donors. It seems to me that this is the first feature of an engaged citizenry. People must feel a need if they are to organize. And what society does not have needs? Who does not want to better their lives?

This raises an interesting question, which I will try and answer later. Is it possible for an outside organization like COMPASS to help people identify their own needs? I’ll argue that it is.

2. Women’s civil society

If donors are looking to invest in civil society, they should start by looking for women’s initiatives. It is self-evident that women are remarkably effective at building civil society in countries of transition, or post-conflict.

This has been much debated, and I will not presume to offer my own explanation. But again, let me point out that some of the most powerful women’s groups that we have worked with were formed out of desperation and loss. The women of Srebrenica lost their men folk in the 1995 massacre. The mothers of the disappeared persons in Latin America lost their husbands and sons to dictatorships. The pursuit of war criminals in Kosovo was led by women, who lost relatives in the war. The campaign against trafficking in Nigeria is led by women who are revolted by the way young girls are forced into sexual slavery. All of these abuses have led to women’s civil society.

Why? Obviously, violations of this kind directly threaten women, but this alone does not explain the ability of women to organize, the comfort they take from each other’s company, their persistence, their lack of competition, their willingness to volunteer their services, and their ability to reach out to women in other countries and cultures. All of these are features of successful civil society.

There is also a suppleness and flexibility to women’s civil society that makes it very adaptable. Women also seem able to see the wider implications of their work, and the possibilities for moving to advocacy. I met recently with a delegation of Hungarian women who are working on trafficking. They started with domestic abuse, then moved to trafficking, and are now trying to change the laws on prostitution.

The “ability to adapt” is hard to pin point and is not the sort of quality that attracts donors who are looking for reliable partners in civil society, but it seems to me highly relevant. I remember visiting a small group of Muslim women in the Bosnian town of Livno. They were the remnants of a large Muslim population, and they were living in daily fear of expulsion. They were determined to meet regularly, for comfort as much as anything.

These meetings produced very few concrete initiatives, but they still offered the best chance for retaining some sort of multiethnic character in Livno after the war. Yet no donor was willing to support them – even to the extent of buying their coffee! One donor representative I talked to said he was not in the business of “paying women to talk.” I would have drawn the opposite conclusion altogether. This was an investment in rebuilding Bosnia.

3. NGOs are not Civil Society

Many Western aid donors equate civil society with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). One of their acts in Bosnia and Kosovo was to create an “enabling environment” for the registration of NGOs. The number of NGOs (international and local) that were registered in Kosovo went from 48 in July 1999 to 400 a year later!

NGOs are, of course, a crucial component of civil society, but they are not the only component, and this emphasis on encouraging the creation of organizations has had some unfortunate consequences.

• It has encouraged the establishment of organizations for their own sake that have no goals and are totally dependent on donor funding. When the donors pull out, or move on, the organization collapses. This happened in Bosnia, where the number of NGOs (local and international) increased to more than 900 in the years following the Dayton Agreement. Today, the number stands at less than 400. Hundreds have gone under. Think of all that wasted effort and money!

• It has encouraged idea that civil society is nongovernmental – i.e. intended to challenge government. Clearly this is not always the case and can be very counter-productive. (More on that in a moment).

• It professionalizes civil society and detaches civil society from its roots and its membership in communities. This has certainly happened in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

• It diverts the energy and resources of community advocates from issues to administration, and weakens their ability to affect social change. Advocates are valuable partners in building peace because of their commitment to social change, not their existence as organizations. Donors completely underestimate the extent to which a group’s drive and initiative is drained by the effort of forming and running an organization. I’ll talk more about this later.

4. Sustainability

Donors often talk about “sustainability” as if it were an end in itself. This is a mistake, and one that can actually impede the development of a strong indigenous civil society.

In the first place, “sustainability” is usually taken to refer to an organization’s ability to survive as an organization, and has little to do with its activities. Donors hate the idea of putting money into an organization that may not last, but if the organization has achieved its goal, why should it continue to exist? A vibrant civil society sheds initiatives as well as gaining new ones, and donors do themselves and civil society a disservice by demanding that their grantees to stay in existence. Survival becomes a goal in itself, and survival becomes increasingly hard as funding dries up. The effort to staying afloat will also force these organizations to acquire new skills. This may well distort their work and divert them from their original mission.

I am certainly not suggesting that sustainability is unimportant or irrelevant, but I am suggesting the emphasis should shift from the organization to their activities. If a group sets itself the goal of creating a green space in a town like Srebrenica it will have to ensure that the space stays green - and this will probably mean that the campaign should continue. Also, the worst thing that a donor can do is to help launch a new initiative, or network, with all the excitement and fanfare that involves, and not be able to sustain the support. (We have fallen into that trap at the Advocacy Project). At the same time, a donor must have some kind of exit strategy if the grantees are to stand on their own feet.

Nor am I saying that civil society initiatives should never evolve into organizations or acquire a formal legal status. There will come the point when a group needs to register, open an office, elect office-holders, open a bank account, pay salaries, and be accountable for money they receive. They will need oversight by a board – because it is exceedingly important that civil society be held to standards of accountability and transparency, just as they hold others accountable. We are facing a terrible situation in the Palestinian Territories at the moment, because one of the largest and richest NGOs has been found to have misused huge amounts of donor funding. This greatly undermines the credibility of Palestinian civil society.

So at some stage, an initiative will have to evolve into an organization. But my suggestion to donors is “don’t push it!” Instead, act like mortgage brokers. When they come to you for help, sit down with them and help them to weigh up all of their assets – volunteers, skills, members - and then decide whether they posses the ability to make the long-term commitment required to be a successful organization. If not, suggest that they focus on volunteerism, at least for the time being.

5. The Importance of Advocacy

NGOs are sometimes distinguished between those who deliver services (medical assistance, training, food, housing etc) and those who engage in advocacy. I want to make two points on this.

First, it seems to me that advocacy is essential for the kind of engaged citizenry that COMPASS wants to see emerge in Albania. We have found that advocacy is particularly important in countries that are emerging from Communism, war, or massive abuse, where the structures of government are weak and lacking in transparency. In such circumstances, advocates are the only ones holding government accountable. Often they perform the same role as a parliamentary opposition.

The contribution of advocacy to building peace and democracy is definitely not appreciated by donors. Nor is the fact that advocates have special needs and require a special type of support. Donors should pay far more attention to this. I’ll have more to say on this in a moment.

Second, I feel that the distinction between “service-delivery” and “advocacy” is becoming increasingly blurred. Some well-known organizations, like NOVIB and Oxfam, have always combined the two, for the obvious reason that anyone who helps people in need will want to address the underlying problem. If you are helping disabled people, you quickly understand that they need more than wheelchairs or prostheses. They need better access and more legal protection. They have a special need to communicate with each other because of their disability, and they need help in getting information about how activists for the disabled are operating in other countries.

This is where the advocacy comes in. Anyone helping disabled people is almost certain to provide a service and support advocacy at the same time. The same is true of much of civil society.

6. Developing Indicators

How do we measure the effectiveness of civil society? COMPASS has its own evaluation team and in their presentation yesterday they put a lot of emphasis on “outputs” such as the number of training sessions held. When donors measure their success in building civil society, they tend to look at the number of NGOs established. When they evaluate a grantee’s success, it tends to be in terms of its ability to attract funds or the number of projects it is implementing.

Indicators like this are not very useful. They do not begin to capture the subtleties of civil society, or measure its contribution. We need more refined tools for evaluating civil society and once again there needs to be less emphasis on what an organization is and more on what it does.

Advocacy will need its own indicators. It is relatively easy to measure the effectiveness of service providers which deliver emergency food, medical aid, or technical training. It is much harder to measure the success of an advocacy campaign. You need to ask how many volunteers have signed on for a campaign. How many people have signed the petition? How many members are committed enough to contribute money? Most important - has the campaign succeeded in meeting its goals? Has the network succeeded in cleaning up the green space in Srebrenica, and keeping it green?

I would also like to see COMPASS develop some measure of how civil society relates to government. Developing indicators is an art in itself, and I don’t know how one would make a start. But it’s the sort of challenge COMPASS might undertake.

2. Civil Society and Government

One of COMPASS’s most important contributions has been to link the strengthening of civil society to the building of local government. This is not often appreciated by donors, who view the creation of an independent civil society as an end in itself. Here in Albania, COMPASS seeks to develop a partnership between citizens and local government, in the hope that that will make citizens more engaged and local government more effective.

This is innovative and important. It rightly insists that civil society is not something that can be imposed from the outside, with the flick of a wand, but that it emerges from a society. Also that local government will be critical in determining whether civil society plays a constructive and useful role.

But will the relationship be one of confrontation and tension, or of partnership? I think it’s important to pose that question, because it reflects two broadly differing views about the role of civil society.

One view stems from the Western tradition, which views government as a threat to individual liberties and sees civil society as a curb on government excess. Perhaps we could call this the “watchdog model,” for want of a better term. Millions of dollars of Western aid has gone into trying to build civil society that will be independent from government, and that can “hold government accountable.”

The second view owes more to the writer Alexis de Tocqueville, who concluded that the strength of American democracy lies in “associations” of citizens that come together around a common goal and may well dissolve once they have achieved their objective. I note from the conference literature that there are 93 NGOs/associations in the municipality of Korca alone, and many of them look a lot like de Tocqueville’s model. They include women’s groups; groups representing the vulnerable (including the blind and disabled); sports; media; tobacco growers; fruit growers and even onion producers. The group with the largest membership (600) serves orphans.

Associations of this kind are clearly less political and less threatening to government than, say, human rights groups. They do, however, play a critical role in activating ordinary people. The mere act of organizing often increases the engagement of citizens in public life and may even evolve into political activity.

COMPASS seeks to nurture both types of civil society – the watchdog and the association. It wants to engage citizens in civic life, and for this the model of the association is essential. But it also wants citizens to show independence towards their government, and if necessary hold it accountable. So which is it to be? Is civil society an adversary of government, or a partner?

I heard both visions expressed yesterday, although the emphasis was definitely on partnership. You may remember that the first prize given out by COMPASS was for a school which was renovated and upgraded by the local government as a result of a lobby by parents. That is very important! Those parents forced the local government to make some hard choices about where it would invest money. That is civil society in action. We also saw an excellent film on the Urban Forum meetings – another COMPASS initiative which gives ordinary people a chance to publicly debate issues of local concern.

But how far would those parents go if they learned that the local government was wasting money and was guilty of corruption? Suppose a mayor is caught with his hand in the till – would he be exposed in an urban forum? Suppose teachers went on strike and were arrested, in violation of their right to free association - would civil society come out and protest? Human rights groups are almost duty-bound to confront government, and 20 of the 27 groups interviewed by COMPASS in Korca said their goal was to “promote human rights.” Are they prepared for the consequences?

This dilemma is bound to grow as democracy matures in Albania, and this makes me feel that COMPASS should anticipate it. COMPASS can serve as middlemen and help local government and civil society develop their tricky relationship. How? Here are five suggestions:

• First, by ensuring that there exists a strong legal framework which allows NGOs to operate from pressure, and receive independent funding.
• Second, by educating both sides about the pressures on the other. This applies particularly to government. It requires great self-confidence to give encouragement and support, while receiving criticism from civil society.
• Third, by providing for some sort of mediation that allows both sides to resolve disputes in the event of a crisis or confrontation. (This needs to be backed up by donor governments. Donors should be prepared to withhold aid if civil society comes under pressure.)
• Fourth, by finding international allies who can provide advice and also disseminate civil society’s material and case studies at the international level.
• Finally, by encouraging an active and independent local media at the municipal level.

3. The Role of Donors

Donors have a critical role to play in the development of civil society. This is implicit in everything I have said today, and at the risk of repetition it might be worth drawing together some conclusions about donors.

As a general point, donors have come a very long way in working with civil society in recent years. Several governments, including the Netherlands, now make it a priority to support civil society. The Open Society Institute has also been a real trail-blazer in sprinkling grants throughout Eastern Europe, rather like venture capital, in the hope that they will blossom into civil society initiatives - and many have. International agencies and development banks are more prepared to give out small grants. There is also a much greater understanding that donors cannot impose civil society from the outside.

At the same time this is still a long way from a coherent donor policy towards civil society. Some general observations:

1. Different agenda: Donor governments have their own agenda, and often this does not coincide with the needs or interests of local civil society. Donors came in with a humanitarian agenda following the 1999 war in Kosovo, and launched a massive humanitarian operation. 245 international NGOs and other agencies swooped down on this tiny country, and their first priority was to prevent any deaths during the winter. That was laudable – and they would certainly have been criticized if someone had died of starvation or exposure – but it mean that they completely squashed the self-reliance, and incredible coping capacity of Kosovars, which had developed during the 1990s. Kosovo offered the UN a rare opportunity to work with a strong and capable civil society at the outset.

To take a much more refined example, the Dutch government requires that much of its non-emergency aid should contribute towards “poverty reduction.” This will make sense to the beekeepers association of Korca, because every pot of honey sold produces income. But what about conflict resolution work between ethnic groups or human rights work? We understand the connection between poverty and human rights abuses in the West, but the link may be much harder to perceive in the municipalities of Albania. Does the Dutch government take the time to explain the thinking behind its aid?

2. Nation-building. Donors invariably begin trying to rebuild a damaged society by restoring the national government, and then work down to communities. Iraq shows how difficult this is. The only consolation for the Americans is that the last ten years have been littered with failures, from Bosnia to Afghanistan.

The international community was so desperate to restore government in Bosnia after the war that it organized elections which reinforced and legitimized the dominance of nationalists who had led Bosnia into war! In Kosovo, they started from the bottom up, with municipal elections, which was much more sensible. But as I just noted, they still they undercut civil society by imposing an entirely new administration on the province. In Afghanistan, they have allowed warlords to control the entire country outside Kabul. None of these three countries is close to real recovery.

3. Time frame. Civil society needs careful nurturing over a period of time, but donors tend to operate on a shortened time-frame, particularly if their money comes from humanitarian accounts. In Kosovo, this meant that small Kosovar organizations suddenly found themselves having to spend very large sums of money in a very short space of time. They simply did not have the administrative capacity.

4. Changing priorities. The priorities of donors can change abruptly for reasons that have nothing to do with the local situation or the needs of civil society. In Bosnia in 1993 and 1994 donors poured money into psychosocial counseling on the basis of reports that Muslim women were being forcibly impregnated and raped on a massive scale. After doubts were cast on that, many donors switched to supporting women’s groups or youth groups. There is something exceptionally arbitrary – even faddish – about the way donor priorities change. International NGOs have a whole system set up for receiving funds from their own governments and can adapt to such changes easily enough, but locals find it much harder.

5. Bureaucratic requirements. Governments are accountable to their parliament and public for every penny that is spent. This means they operate in certain ways, and on certain assumptions, that may well collide with those of local civil society. We all know how burdensome it can be for a small organization to produce reports on how it has spent a grant. Moreover, this reporting function is often done by “core” staff as opposed to staff that are paid under a project – yet we hear repeatedly from our partners that their donors are unwilling to fund “core” expenses like salaries and rent!

6. Double standards. In general donors, prefer not to give small grants, because of the administrative costs involved. This benefits larger organizations, which can handle large amount of money, and punishes small local groups. Often, the size of a grant, or the reporting requirements, seem to have nothing to do with how well money is spent. Indeed it has been our experience that donors apply much stricter standards to small organizations in how they manage money than to larger recipients. This is a perverse double standard, particularly as money is far more likely to be better spent by a group that has very little of it! (We might call this “the widow’s mite syndrome.”) One very prominent international NGO working in Kosovo in 1999 was found to have embezzled tens of thousands of dollars. But the NGO got away with a minor slap on the wrist because the US government had become totally dependent on its services. You can bet that if a small civil society initiative fails to properly account for a $10,000 grant, it will never get money again!

7. Building the Media. Many donors are in love with the idea of promoting an independent media, which they view as an essential component of independent civil society. I think they are right, but it is very difficult to do. In Kosovo, the UN was forced to close down one prominent paper after it exercised its press freedom and exposed the name of a suspected war criminal, who was promptly murdered. In Northern Iraq, recently, one American military administrator refused to close down a paper that drew on the reports of Al Jazeera (the controversial Arab daily) – and was herself promptly suspended by her American superiors. In both cases, the political goals of the international peace-builders (national building, ethnic reconciliation etc) collided with the notion of press freedom.

So how can donors support an indigenous media in a society which has never known press freedom? This is a difficult question, but it starts with a false assumption - that there is nothing in place. The seeds of an active media are almost always present – donors simply have to look in the right place. The war in Bosnia generated scores of small local media initiatives – radio and publications – that helped people survive during the war and could have laid the foundation for an active media in peacetime.

Many of these local media initiatives are not particularly professional. Some do not even employ journalists. But this simply means we have to be open-minded about what we mean by “media.” Working with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), our consultant in Afghanistan is training women to produce and publish their own magazine, not because we want to turn them into journalists but because it is empowering for women to write and publish in a stifling society which does not value women. Many purists would decline to call this real journalism, and the quality of their articles will fall well below that of professionals. But some of these women writers may catch the bug, acquire the professional skills and emerge to strengthen the sector.

8. The Importance of Intermediaries. None of these conclusions are particularly scientific, but I imagine many would agree with them. My basic point is that it takes time and effort to work with local civil society, and understand its very special needs. We would argue that this is worth the effort, because civil society is such an essential partner in building democracy. But few donors seem willing or able to adapt in this way, or enter into a real dialogue with civil society.

The gap can be filled by projects like COMPASS, and by international NGOs (INGOs). They can act as a bridge between donors and local civil society. They are not subject to the same constraints as donor governments and because they come from civil society themselves, they share the same aspirations and culture as their local counterparts. They understand the importance of not imposing their own agenda or creating new artificial initiatives. At the same time, they can also inspire local initiatives. The well-known women’s health group Medica, which is working in Bosnia and Kosovo, was started by a German organization. Bosfam, the women’s group that we work with in Tuzla and Srebrenica, was modeled on Oxfam.

COMPASS acts as such a bridge in Albania, working on behalf of the Dutch government. It is run by three prominent Dutch NGOs that obviously work well together. But some of the conference documents also hint that COMPASS may face some competition from other European NGOs, which are also keen to work with civil society in their five municipalities.

This has to be avoided at all costs. To take the example of Kosovo once again, we found one grotesque example of competition in Mitrovica, where three different INGOs were all supporting women’s groups in one street and even competing for clients among the traumatized women of the neighborhood! It is essential that international NGOs coordinate their efforts. They should also remember that coordination can mean turning down a lucrative project, and handing over to another group that may have superior expertise. Coordination requires discipline.

4. Conclusions and Practical Suggestions

Let end by trying to answer the question I began with. We can all agree that local civil society in a country like Albania is relatively weak and in need of help. But how can donors and well-wishers provide help and support without imposing their own views and approaches? Here are some ideas:

1. Understand local civil society. This is expressed rather well in one conference document. The strength of civil society lies in its commitment; its ability to mobilize ordinary people; its determination. Leaders of civil society tend to be charismatic, articulate, and brave.

The most serious weaknesses tend to be organizational. Civil society tends to be dependent on strong individuals (The document ever refers to the “totalitarian” tendencies of some civil society leaders!). It is very difficult for these initiatives to move beyond the personalities of their founders, and create a structure that can exist independent of individuals – but this is definitely the key to a successful organization. They find it hard to set clear goals and develop strategic plans. They lack administrative skills, such as accounting. They are excellent advocates, but they need help in planning and developing campaigns. They are great communicators, but they lack the skills to write press releases which can catch the attention of journalists. They know that they have to work with government, and many of the have even worked in government at some stage. Yet, they find it hard to work government relations into their strategic planning.

Anyone wanting to work with a civil society partner must start by making their own assessment, in conjunction with the partner. Together, they must then tailor a program of support for the local partner.

2. Don’t get preoccupied by definitions. I would advise COMPASS not to spend too much time worrying about the definition of civil society, but rather understand the point made earlier - people always come together when they are under pressure. The strongest and most effective partners have clear goals and issues. The more committed they are to their goals, the more reliable they will be as partners. (If a donor is looking to judge whether a local group is committed and reliable, it might want to ask the group to work for free for six months!).

3. Direct “capacity-building” to specific goals. We’ve talked a lot about goals today: capacity-building means helping civil society to meet its goals. For many donors, “capacity-building” has become a goal in itself. We should also remember that capacity-building is not the transfer of skills from one side to another, so much as an exchange of skills that benefits both partners. COMPASS will learn much from its work with civil society in Albania!

4. Help to identify needs and goals. I have argued that everyone has needs, but that they may not be aware of them. Can we help civil society better identify its own needs – and hence set goals? This might seem presumptuous, but I feel it’s important to make the effort. I’m making some assumptions here. I’m assuming that if you sat down with some members from the Association of the Blind from Korca and talked through some of the problems facing blind people, you might help them to pinpoint some needs that they might not have thought of, and identify some very specific goals for advocacy. That would not be imposing ideas on them, if it was done in a sensitive way. In terms of holding such a discussion, COMPASS has already come up with a model in the form of its “Urban Fora,” which we saw yesterday on film.

5. Research. One way to help civil society to identify issues and goals is to build its capacity to conduct original research. The women’s group that we partner with in Nigeria has put trafficking on the map because they were given a small research grant to look at trafficking several years ago. At the time, they had no idea the problem even existed. Now they are one of the world’s leading experts on trafficking from Africa. Another young Roma woman we work with in Macedonia has helped young Roma women collect information about demeaning Roma wedding traditions. This has burgeoned into a successful women’s campaign. Both examples show that helping civil society to develop a research capacity can build capacity, and also identify goals.

6. Communications and Information. Another way to strengthen civil society is through the production of information material – newsletters, press releases and websites. Not only does this keep others informed, but it forces people to work together to develop a coherent message. Updating a website regularly, and producing a regular newsletter, calls for tremendous discipline and internal organization that can have all sorts of beneficial side-effects.

A successful information strategy also calls for some specialized skills, but this is where the training and capacity-building comes in. Once again, the trick is to develop an approach that builds on an existing indigenous capacity. This is not hard when it comes to IT, because young people all over the world understand and like computers. One of our most successful projects involves training a group of young Roma activists from East Europe to help Roma advocates make better use of IT. This very quickly got past the technical stage and expanded into a more general project to support advocacy by Roma. These Roma techies (or “eRiders,” as they are called) have inspired a number of interesting and quite successful local advocacy campaigns in Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

7. Training. Training is the means by which we as outsiders help to build local capacity, but this too has become an end in itself for many donors and INGOs. “Training fatigue” seems to have set in here in Albania! This suggests that the training is not carefully enough tailored to need, and that not enough attention is paid to the results. As with “capacity-building,” training needs to set itself a very clear goal.

8. Raising money. It would be foolish to suggest fund-raising is not important. As soon as an initiative develops into a formal organization, it will need a budget. Many people at this conference have commented on how difficult this is, particularly when an economy is depressed. They also know that being dependent on donors is not a long-term solution. Private sources of funding are certainly more reliable than public, but the private sector is usually weak in former Communist countries or countries coming out of war.

One solution is to get funding from the local government, as many civic initiatives do here in Albania. The problem with this is that civil society becomes a branch of government, and will find it very difficult to exercise what we called the “watchdog function” and hold government to account.

I feel that civil society could make much more of its contacts abroad to raise funds. For example, the Albanian diaspora helped to fund Kosovo’s alternative self government during the 1990s – why should that same diaspora be less interested in the building of democracy here in Albania? It is also the case that many foreign NGOs have developed successful strategies for fund-raising, which they might share with local partners. NOVIB has been very successful at raising money from a lottery in the Netherlands. Would that work in Albania? It certainly is very important to learn from others, and from success stories. USAID has started to compile some best practices.

9. Networking and going international. This is the era of globalization and the internet, and at some stage a strong civil society initiative will almost certainly decide to reach out to others and form a network. It may also seek out international or regional allies. Our project is a firm believer in the power of networks, and in developing international partnerships. We also believe that local civil society initiatives could do much more to exploit international organizations like the UN, European Commission, Council of Europe, or OSCE. Our Roma friends in East Europe are starting to exploit the fact that their own governments have been told to improve the living conditions of the Roma as a precondition to joining the European Union. This allows them to put pressure on their own government to make improvements locally. It’s a good example of how local and international advocacy support each other. Groups like COMPASS, with their international contacts, can help to identify these allies.

But if there are advantages to developing such alliances there are also disadvantages. It is hard enough to manage a local advocacy campaign, let alone work with people in different countries. Is it worth the effort to form a new network? What is the objective? What are the likely advantages? How will it affect relations with the local government? All of this needs to be carefully thought through in advance. Here is another task for groups like COMPASS.

I want to end with a general comment. This talk has been based, throughout, on a Western understanding of civil society. We are meeting in a democratic European country. But if we look at the world today, it quickly becomes clear that this is only one very limited part of the story. Other cultures see civil society differently. This needs to be appreciated, otherwise our support for civil society will be seen as another example of Western arrogance and become very divisive.

The Dutch government has led the way in supporting civil society. Perhaps it might consider sponsoring a meeting between civic leaders from Asia, the Middle East and the West? They would learn much from other, and help donors to get a better understanding of the challenges involved in “supporting civil society.”

• Iain Guest is Coordinator of The Advocacy Project and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.

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