ZSUZSANNA VEGH, YEaP Newsletter Editor-in-chief
After the short winter break our exams forced us to take, the newsletter of Youth Eastern Partnership is back with its latest and maybe somewhat unusual issue. Our most faithful readers might have gotten used to us covering issues of high politics, however, this time we decided to look at the civil societies of Eastern Partnership countries.
We believe that building an active civil society is an important element of the transitional process EaP countries are going through. Strong civil activism is necessary not only to provide checks and balances to governmental activity, but also to give voice to minorities and to empower people. Civil society development is a road full of difficulties even in well-established democracies and an even bigger challenge in transition countries, especially in those cases where the government is not particularly in favor of civil participation.
I am happy to inform you that YEaP had the chance to participate in the third Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum in Poznan, Poland. Lyubov Artemenko represented our organization and her report of the event gave us the idea to dedicate this issue to the civil society. David Rinnert, who spent some time in the Caucasus in 2011, volunteered to tell us about the civil involvement in urban development in Azerbaijan and Georgia, while Lesia Parno found it important to draw our attention to the decline of democratic institutions in Ukraine and the threat this tendency poses for the society. All articles show that much remains to be done with regards to civil society development, and we will see how central the governmental attitude is in this process. Nonetheless, the YEaP team remains positive that the task is not impossible.
We wish you a good time reading our articles (click here or download pdf) and we encourage you to send us your feedback via e-mail or on Facebook!
