International UNESCO Education Server for Civic, Peace and Human Rights Education

D@dalos, Association for Peace Education Work, Sarajevo

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report is the result of a six-month field study conducted by D@dalos between May and November 2002 into the state of the non-profit sector in BiH in all areas of the country beyond the centres of economic, political and development influence. In compiling this report qualitative data from 154 interviews with civil society organisations in 51 small towns and villages from across the whole of BiH were placed in the context of current development and civil society theory, in order to produce an interpretive assessment of civil society.

The aim of the report is to provide international and Bosnian development agencies, foreign governments and training institutions with a detailed overview of the present capacity and potential of community-based organisations in rural BiH. It is hoped that these agencies will use the report’s findings to target future funding and training interventions more accurately. At the same time, the report may be used as a diagnostic tool by Bosnian organisations for improving their performance.

CBOs in rural BiH are presently greater in number and more widespread than had previously been thought. Half the CBOs currently operating are three-and-a-half years old or less. In the main, they are staffed by workers who have no prior experience of the non-profit sector. The steady stream of new CBOs testifies to a growing sense of empowerment among local communities.

CBOs that constitute civil society in rural BiH are founded upon values of inclusiveness, ethnic equality, social equity and empowerment of the individual that are directed towards the fulfilment of practical needs within the local community. This common community-oriented framework combined with the closeness CBOs to their beneficiaries and their willingness for public service, gives civil society the potential to play an increasingly important role in (re)creating stable communities across BiH by building trust between local citizens, inculcating values of reciprocity and mitigating conflicts in the locality.

A great many CBOs are not fulfilling this potential owing to small organisation size, poor financial resources and a lack of skills, experience and general capacities. In contrast to this, a small elite cadre of fully professional NGOs dominates effective community action across the country. These are generally older organisations that have built their success on an ability to attract steady and increasing international funding over the years. All have high levels of organisational skills, having benefited from a variety of technical trainings from INGOs, but remain in touch with their constituents at the grassroots.

All CBOs face challenges in accessing sufficient resources to fund activities. The majority of CBOs lack a solid financial base and many are presently insolvent. Most of the sector is over dependent on international sources of funding, which are reduced, increasingly unpredictable and in total insufficient to support more than a fraction of civil society activity. Despite lack of wealth in the BiH economy generally, funding from local sources is possible and a viable option for the development of a sector consisting mainly of small voluntary grassroots organisations. Encouragingly a significant number of organisations are beginning to develop successful strategies for developing a variety of local sources of income and the evidence is clear that BiH citizens are willing to support activities from which they may gain personally in non-financial ways or which serve an important community need.

The potential for effective sustainable activity is not simply a measure of an organisation’s ability to attract or generate funds. It is a composite of characteristics, behaviours, working methods and attitudes that includes identity, relationships with the community and other stakeholders, structure, technical skills and experience, internal management and communication, and the ability to learn, adapt and forward plan. Taken as a whole, the sector is performing poorly in all these areas. Very often, external political, social and economic obstacles exacerbate poor CBS performance.

Indistinct organisational identity is a common cause of a lack of focus in CBO activity and a lack of direction and forward planning. Poor relationships with and unsophisticated understanding of beneficiaries contributes to low rates of voluntary action and community support. Community instability and differential social entitlements resulting from ongoing return, public mistrust of NGOs and poverty induced public apathy may all inhibit good beneficiary relations.

Within the wider community, relations with local government are particularly difficult to establish. Municipalities are indifferent to CBOS and ill prepared to cooperate with civil society for reasons of their own shortcomings in capacity, skills and finance.

CBOs have the will to cooperate with one another, but competition for financial resources, personnel and popular support often prove serious barriers to effective communication and cooperation.

The skills and experience needed for organisation development and management are in short supply in rural BiH. Many organisations have benefited from technical trainings from international NGOs, but in the last three years availability of training is greatly reduced. This is disadvantaging the half of the sector that has emerged in this period, particularly in project design and all forms of planning. Skills shortages are compounded by a cultural tendency for CBOs to be over dependent on a single dominant leader in whom the bulk of decision-making powers, skills and administrative responsibilities are concentrated.

Present weaknesses in civil society in rural BiH can be overcome. There are many positive examples of CBOs improving performance by accessing and exploiting a variety of locally available resources of all kinds, financial, material and human. A small number of CBOs, including some young and poorly financed organisations, have developed learning cultures that maximise the potential of their limited resources. By applying institutionalised processes of constant reassessment, improvisation and experiment they are adapting to external change and also gaining a measure of control over the environment they work in.

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