A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Aid and Civil Society - Sevdie Sadiqi's Rough Ride With Donors

Sevdie Sadiqi, a law student at Prishtina University, decided to arrest the decline at her once-proud university. In so doing she became an unwitting symbol of the gulf that has existed between civil society in Kosovo and the international agencies during the first year of "peace-building."

Prishtina University is world famous. It was here that Albin Kurti, the student leader, helped launch peaceful mass demonstrations in 1997 and (successfully) demanded educational autonomy for Kosovo's Albanian population. 

Peshorja - working for change at the University

Albin still languishes in a Serbian jail. His union has collapsed, leaving the students bereft of a champion at a critical moment. Of the university's 23,000 registered students, only 8,000 attend classes. Students find it so difficult to pay the cost of tuition and lodging that some professors are speaking to empty classes. Other professors have given up and are working at NGOs or U.N. organizations. 

Sevdie and some friends spent seven months studying the crisis. They collected 3,000 signatures asking for reform. Based on their findings, they decided that they needed to be more organized. So they registered as an NGO with the United Nations, took the name of Peshorja ('Balance'), prepared a budget, and looked for money.

Over the next three months, they did not receive a single inquiry from a potential donor.

Sevdie's first mistake was to assume that donors would be interested. There was good reason for believing it. After all, donors had poured money into emergency relief. In 1999 the British government wrote Kosovo a check for $160 million.

But in 2000 Great Britain proposes to spend around $7.5 million. The British example is extreme but not untypical. Earlier in this series, we noted how USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) had pushed villages to create "community improvement councils" (CICs) in order to design appropriate projects. But OTI is now cutting back its budget, leaving many projects unfunded.

The blunt fact is that donors are losing interest in civil society, or shifting their funds to longer term infrastructure development projects. This is hard to understand because advocacy has such a critical role to play in Kosovo at this time. Kosovo has none of the conventional checks and balances of a normal society. Everything is in flux-its government, its economy, and its politics. Advocates like Sevdie can help fill the void and provide some legitimacy. But to do this, they need support.

Peshorja's second mistake was to rely on the OSCE. Sevdie and her friends brought their proposal to one of seven NGO "resource centers," which have been set up by the OSCE to provide facilities for NGOs and put them in touch with donors.

The OSCE's Kosovo NGO resource center has a staff of five, a meeting room, and a large basement for training. It also offers use of two computers. Neshat Shaqiri, the Center's manager, had been a teacher under the parallel society and he knew that Sevdie was on to something important. But his Center had not yet attracted a loyal clientele among NGOs or donors. It was seen as an outside implant by many veteran civic groups, and it was clearly not on the radar screen of donors.

One is tempted to say that Sevdie's third mistake was to insist on creating an NGO. This status is bestowed by UNMIK, and the application is something of a formality: As of July 2000, an astounding 642 Kosovar NGOs had been registered.

As was noted elsewhere in this series, the existence of NGOs conveys the impression of a vibrant civil society, but this is clearly not justified. Being an NGO is no guarantee of being effective, and it may even cause a backlash. In the first place, NGO status imposes administrative burdens (boards, reports, audits, etc.) that can divert advocates from the campaigns. In the second place the funds are drying up-as Peshorja has found to its cost.

UNMIK's NGO registration process holds out a false promise, particularly to advocates, because it encourages them to form organizations prematurely. The most successful advocates, like Halit Ferizi of Handikos, only evolve into organizations as their needs become clearer.

Donors, also, are holding out a false promise to advocates. Sevdie Sadiqi put in seven months of unpaid effort to advance one of the key goals of the international community - namely the revival of Kosovo's educational system. She feels that this work is enough to warrent support from donors.

What happens if a group like Peshorja submits to this grueling apprenticeship and puts in seven months of unpaid effort to advance one of the key goals of the international community-namely the revival of Kosovo's educational system? Sevdie Sadiqi has no doubts at all. She feels there is an unwritten contract between civil society and the international community. She feels that she and her friends are owed.

This is not expressed well, or graciously. "I've made sacrifices," she said, with a touch of petulance. "We've been at this for seven months."

We suggested that this sort of talk would not go down well with donors. When they think of sacrifice, they think of the relatives of disappeared or victims of rape-not middle-class students collecting signatures.

But at heart she is clearly right. Not only do Kosovo's donors have a moral obligation to support advocates like Sevdie-it lies in their interest if they are at all serious about reforming higher education in Kosovo. Like so many problems in Kosovo, the crisis in the university feeds on resignation and silence. A dollar spent on Peshorja will do more for peace than ten dollars spent on "youth projects" through an international NGO.

Peshorja was finding it hard to make this case. Still, they don't give up. Just recently, we were pleasantly surprised to receive a new proposal from Peshorja, written with the help of another NGO, which makes more concessions to donors.

Hopefully, it will shame someone into responding. Certainly, when it comes to civil society, persistence is the name of the game.