Croatia as a Foreign Development Aid Donor

On 6th and 7th April 2011 the Centre for Peace Studies from Zagreb organized a two-day seminar on the role of civil society in offering foreign development aid, held at the Human Rights House in Zagreb.

The seminar organized in cooperation with TRIALOG aimed to jumpstart Croatian international developing aid planning from the perspective of civil society organizations. Some 20 representatives of NGOs from various fields, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Croatia and the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs had the opportunity to learn about the experiences of EU member and candidate countries in organizing development NGO platforms and what development cooperation is about, while also taking an active part in shaping the Croatian platform.

The first day of the seminar members of TRALOG presented the ways in which platforms were organized in new member states and candidate countries. Marjan Huc from the Slovenian development NGO platform SLOGA offered concrete examples of its work and beginnings. It was noted that most EU states have a national platform, which serves the interests of their members by providing support, information and educational activities, as well as representing their interests before the EU wide platform CONCORD. Given that Croatia is not a member of the European Union, priority fields for development aid of the EU were presented along with some principles of development in general. Overall, the first day served to increase awareness regarding the importance of organizing a NGO platform and emphasized the opportunity that Croatia has in producing a solid working platform before it joins the EU.

The second day of the seminar was used to deal with more practical issues related to developing the NGO platform and priorities that need to be addressed. Participants shared views on the institutional set up needed in Croatia and worked on defining possible roles the Croatian platform would have along with suggesting next concrete steps. It was suggested that along with a platform it would be a good idea to have a consortium, which would be organized on a project basis in order to gather like-minded NGOs to undertake a given project. Thus far a total of 4 NGOs committed themselves to working towards organizing next steps in the development of a NGO platform.

Overall, the seminar served to promote the idea of Croatia as a donor county, which will eventually provide international development aid not only to countries in its neighborhood, but also further oversees into Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is an important shift in the capacities Croatian civil society organizations need to develop and the roles they could take. The representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed their willingness to continue working towards enabling civil society organizations to provide foreign development aid by assisting in the development of the platform. The next meeting is penciled in for mid-June, where more concrete steps towards the creation of a national platform will be addressed. It will also address a greater number of CSOs – as well as other stakeholders –in order to raise awareness regarding the issue.

Information provided by Tihomir Popovic