Victor Kogan-Yasny, Chairman of the “Regional Civic Initiative”, Adviser to the Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic “Yabloko” Party
Though the first NGO-like groups were established several centuries ago, in reality the structures called “NGOs” obtained pan-European and trans-Atlantic importance after the Second World War. A lot of independent groups with a humanitarian and democratic orientation grew up everywhere in the West in the 1950s. The Western governments favoured this process, because it was clear that the grassroots of the civil society were a means of protecting all sorts of dictatorship. Small groups with very limited financial resources turned out to be able to seek fresh approaches to deal with complications and conflicts on a par with governments and rich corporations. Setting up independent pan-European networks had become a serious historical innovation, which was conducive to build the European integrity and oppose totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
In the 1960s and the 1970s new NGOs were established with the aim of protecting human rights at a national and international level. People set up these organisations on a generally loose humanitarian basis, a fact that had its tactical pluses and strategic minuses. Signing in 1975 the Final Act of the CSCE in Helsinki gave an impetus to these motley organisations to act with a better motivation.
At that period the building of the European Community had two aspects: moral values one could term “Social-Christian” and a detailed elaboration of economic foundations. Combined with the Euro-Atlantic security policy it helped to build speedily a more or less effective pan-European society, able to overcome militarist claims, xenophobia, to establish the rule of law principle, and to abolish the death penalty. This became one more challenge for the rival Communist system and was conducive, historically, to its failure.
European NGOs played an important role in this process. They acted as a moral authority and, simultaneously, as a kind of “public think tanks” whose information and expertise could be relied on by everybody, including major decision-makers of that time.
When in the course of the past 15 years the global paradigm has entirely changed, decision-making as well as expertise, against the background of new challenges of the past decades, have revealed their organic weaknesses.
The European Union is remarkably successful in a technological aspect, though it has lost its moral authority. In the globalised world of ‘top managers’ and ‘key players’ EU official representatives usually demonstrate just an insignificant difference in style and declarations as compared with leaders of non-democratic, poor, socially contrasted countries and regions and often seem to act rather like managers of big corporations than politicians protecting democracy.
Civil control, the main force of European democracy during the past 50 years, is fading drastically, especially as far as pan-European institutions are concerned.
Modern authoritarian governments are hostile to independent civil and political activities and often use the “puppet” mechanism to diminish their influence. However even democratic governments in the conditions of the post-Cold War global change in mode and style of political management often demonstrate their tendency to self-containment and neglect of independent experts and expertise bodies as useless in the solution of practical issues. Things in the world seem to them to be either too obvious or too complicated to seek diversity of an independent analysis and expertise.
Independent expertise carried out by think tanks, NGOs and the media becomes less and less welcome and is not, in no small degree, taken into consideration in decision-making process. Thus, independent institutions are leading more and more their own life, being separated from decision-making and, what is more important and significant, from reality itself. They are losing their influence, becoming passive and bureaucratised bodies, in accordance with the growth of their peripheral role.
One can say that whereas in the 1980s information society took over the totalitarianism based on propaganda, in the 2000s we exist in some new kind of “post-information societies” where information is becoming psychologically excessive both for the majority of ordinary people and bureaucracies and therefore is systematically neglected.
In recent time the most often quoted in the media are those NGOs that perform monitoring of violence or freedom abuses and defend individuals or groups that have become victims of violence or abuses. Some other NGOs that are trying to tackle problems on a more advanced level and seek solutions based on moral principles and simultaneously realistic ones often lower the level of their activities and lose their importance.
One could add that globalisation to some extent has replaced the “existential” dominant of personal responsibility widely spread among intellectuals after the Second World War with more “positivist” and passive approaches in societies as well as in governments. Therefore, more and more crisis and conflict situations become inaccessible for independent evaluation and any sort of independent mediation. This is a very alarming signal for modern humanity.
I can see no proper “know how” to improve this situation. But one thing is obvious to me. Independent institutions can and should remain a serious source of knowledge and expertise in the areas in which they are active. NGOs, as well as the serious media, should be able to propose honest, humane, and at the same time realistic patterns for a peace settlement of certain conflicts. They should make realistic proposals for building infrastructure and for defining ways of peaceful and realistic spread of democracy and the rule of law principle in the European sense of the word.
An important mission of responsible NGOs is to pay a particular attention to building dialogue between authoritarian governments and oppositions making the oppositions’ voice heard and listened to if even a small possibility for it does exist.
It is really difficult for independent experts and NGOs to express any influential point of view onto, say, relations between India and Pakistan, Russian gas, etc. They are not serious players there.
Nevertheless, in some other also very dangerous situations an independent and timely intervention could be expedient.
For instance, if the situation in Georgia and the Russian-Georgian relations had drawn close attention at least since 2007, the 2008 armed conflict possibly could have been avoided.
There is a major task now of filling the EU “East-European Partnership” programme with a real content. In my view, this programme is much more politically precise and promising than NATO voluntaristic attempts at a rapid expansion.
It is very important to approach the problem of reconciliation of the Albanians and the Serbs and lifting the hostility barrier between the Serbian people and NATO structures. The enmity on these “demarcation lines” will remain an explosive factor even in the context of outwardly safe versions of political development. The way Russia and Central Asian states of the former USSR are developing will remain to be a European topic not only in philosophical but in a political aspect as well. Different vectors of development of the EU and Russia present a huge problem overlooked in its time and harbouring by dangers.
At the same time some NGOs may act as a “Sherpa” for European governments and the European Commission in relations with those countries of Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia where prospects can be seen of modernisation, social institutions and economies.
Discussion on the future of China would also be timely.
Independent bodies still have human resources to avoid superficial approaches, to establish necessary coordination and to reach important practical results. As 30 years ago, active coordination and exchange of opinions and experiences is necessary between NGOs and media, particularly those whose declared views are close to each other.
Measure of NGOs effectiveness (including their projects) has been and will be different. But to support them is, on the whole, a very reasonable investment, for it is incomparable money against sums spent on state structures and analytical services of business corporations. What is meant here is uncommitted independent activity whose participants depend only on their convictions.
Let’s add that independent honest persons who sometimes are, by their origin, from problem countries and regions get an opportunity to effectively realise themselves often bringing considerable positive results. This benefit should be also encouraged.
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