Conflict on Croatian Civil Scene

15 February 2006

Last thursday, 2 February, the �Civil Society Forum� informal initiative that gathers a number of Croatian NGOs, came out with strong accusations against the activities of the National Foundation for Development of Civil Society in 2005. The Foundation is accused of fostering conflict of interests of its governing body members; the inexistence of supervisory or body that would receive complaints; unclear evaluation procedures; unclear financial operations; lack of programming profiling and unjustified expenditures.

Futhermore, the Forum addressed the issue of institutional support allocated by the Foundation in 2005, disputing the grants allocated to certain organizations. The public statement, released by the Forum, states that SMART and Biopa don�t qualify for financial support, having in mind that they earn income from their own activities. SMART, for instance, is a consulting and training consortium which represents, in fact, unfair competition SMART to the associations. Following the same principle, the Forum says, support could be given to book-keeping services employed by the associations, companies that service their equipment, etc.

The Civil Society Forum was established in 2005, as an ad hoc initiative of CSOs, with the goal to open the space for dialogue and cooperation, establishment of principles and criteria of action and communication, establish solidarity and support network, dialogue with government institutions and international organizations based on the principles of responsible and transparent communication and cooperation, monitoring of adoption and implementation of policies, application of constitutional values, implementation of laws and public interest policies.

The Forum includes over 15 organizations: the Autonomous Women House Zagreb, B.a.B.e., CESI, Centre for Peace Studies, ROSA Centre for Women Victims of War, Women Studies Centre, Free Education Forum, GONG, Iskorak � Centre for Rights of Sexual and Gender Minorities, Kneja, Kontra, Human Rights Committee from Karlovac, the Serb Democratic Forum, TOD (Association for Study of Transition towards Democracy, Zelena Akcija, ZaMirNET, Women Aid Now � SOS Phone, and Zenska Soba.

Nonetheless, last Sunday, the Kneja Association for Culture and Coexistence with the Nature stepped out of the Forum, distancing itself from the statements of individual organizations and aberated significantly from the directions declared in its Charter.

SMART, the organization that was directly attacked by the Forum, also came out in public yesterday and demanded from the Forum to provide explanation for its accusations and to appologize for the presented lies and insults. SMART representatives say that, judging from their approach, the Forum should review its own work and until such a review, it can�t engage in judging the work of other organizations and institutions, including the work of the National Foundation.

SMART�s requests were supported by a great number of organizations and individuals, even several members of the Forum itself. Danijela Babic, Executive Directress of ZaMirNET, renounced the allegations against SMART and said that ZaMirNET wasn�t present at the meeting that disscussed the draft of the Statement and doesn�t back the accusations against SMART.

Marina Skrabalo from the Centre for Peace Studies supported SMART and added that she demanded from the CMS Executive Board to report on the letter. She expressed her strong belief that CMS will receive this reprimands with utmost urgency, having in mind that other people in the organization were apalled by the accusations presented by the Forum.

The conflict and controverses resulting from the public statement point out that wide platforms that include great number of actors, such as the Civil Society Forum, can lose their legitimacy and the very raison d�etre rather easily if used as an instrument of attack against individual organizations. This is especially true if activities of such coalitions are implemented without prior communication and strong agreement of all involved parties.