The Civil Society Program
Bosnia and Herzegovina has a certain "limited" history of development of the "third sector". Before the war (1992-1995), there was a range of public organizations with activities mainly in the areas of culture and sport. During and after the war, establishment of many new non - governmental organizations emerged, and especially in those parts of the country where representatives of the international community, their agencies and organizations are located. A few years ago, there was a publication Directory of non-governmental organizations in B&H, compiled by organization ICVA, and that provided information on 365 local non-governmental organizations. It was estimated even at that time a functioning of 1500 different public organizations that could be classified as "non-governmental" organizations.
More serious analysts of the social circumstances in Bosnia and Herzegovina have always been careful not to equate this post-war growth of the non-governmental organizations with a "revolution" in the sense of sudden growth of a truly strong civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the number of non-governmental organizations would be only one of the measures, and not the most important one. It was evident that this expansion in quantity was decisively conditioned by the presence of the international factor and that it did not result in a proportional increase in quality.
At the beginning of 2000, the Open Society Fund - B&H experienced itself significant changes regarding its internal organization and re-defining its mission and strategy. Some of the programs ceased to exist, some went through considerable changes and new programs emerged, whilst under the new strategy, the "Civil Society" program underwent certain revisions.
At the same time, the election results in April 2000 were such that it was possible to interpret them in a way that inspired certain optimism. Encouraged by the actual political processes in the country, we approached the task of devising a completely new strategy for the Open Society Fund - B&H. In "re-designing" the "Civil Society" program, we tried to have a truly realistic and critically conscious position, which revealed two possible aspects concerning the "problems of development of civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina".
The first aspect was the fact that at all levels in the existing structure of the civil society as it is in B&H, the understanding of the concept of civil society itself, was very limited. The second aspect was the fact that the territorial distribution of civil activism in B&H was very uneven. Both aspects are closely influenced by the presence of the international factor in B&H. In short, "the growth of the third sector in B&H" or "the growth of the civil society in B&H" is of a more "quantitative" than "qualitative" character. The "donator factor" was easily recognizable and, even though it was guided by good intentions, and had positive effects, it resulted in the whole process having an artificial nature, as opposed to a truly authentic awakening of a mature "civil consciousness" in our society.
Today we can say that, at last, some mature initiatives are developing regarding changes to this field and we are pleased to say that OSF B&H is a part of this process. Still, we should not delude ourselves and paint the road in front of us shorter than it really is.
In our vocabulary, the syntagm "civil society" conveys a wider notion than the syntagm "third sector". Naturally, the two expressions are often interchangeable, which is not a problem in itself if there is an understanding that the "problems of civil society" are not something that can be reduced to the "third sector" in the wider context. Unfortunately this is often not the case.
Another factor is important for understanding the principle approach that OSF B&H has in the Civil Society program. Namely, in the context of discussions on understanding and "defining" the civil society, we have been inclined to the way of thinking that puts the "question of values" at the front: what are the possible "contents of values of a civil society"? Without defining this question, any actual instance of social organization "passes for" an instance of "civil society", disregarding the values that a particular civil group advocates. In this way, the term "civil society" becomes "devoid" of meaning, and any set of values, which has gained legitimacy by the mere fact that it has a "critical mass" of advocates that can be forced upon a society.
During 2003 and 2004, in the Civil Society program, we concentrated our attention on the ways public opinion is created in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the status of public dialogue.
Public dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been in a certain "blind alley" for a long time now. We arrived there driven by a powerful propaganda machine. Here, as in many cases throughout history, a manipulative political propaganda succeeded in making it impossible for people to think for themselves. To that extent, public dialogue is almost inexistent. We listen to the monologues of spokespersons who speak "on behalf" of the collective. The fact that collectives achieved consensus a long time ago is not questioned, and even if that consensus was achieved, it was so long ago that no one remembers when anymore. People still believe that the consensus exists, and if they start to give it up - that something awful will happen to them. The "others" will catch them weak and simply crush them, because they, those others, will not give up their consensus. They will not be "cheated" and "seduced". In this way, both here and in the neighboring countries, nothing changed much in the past few years from election to election.
"Descriptions of reality" that rule our public scene do not lead, often seemingly at the behest of the promoters, towards the solving of important problems for a normal functioning of the society. Those descriptions are such that they only reproduce these problems.
Stated in the "basic terminology" of OSF B&H, we could say that through our post-war efforts to build a civil society in this country, we finally came to the conclusion that the existing public dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina has become completely closed. Today, the intellectual dignity, with honorable individual exceptions, is drowned out by an onslaught of the "true believers" who see themselves as followers and middlemen of ideas and solutions that have already been perfected and come from "above", from "those who know better" - that is, from the majority of political and religious leaders in this country, who, in an exalted way, proclaim "salvation of the nation" as their main task.
The inevitable conclusion is that Bosnia and Herzegovina needs new and different "opinion makers" if we want to see any changes and if we want to go towards the direction of constituting a modern society, a society of relatively rational entities/individuals - citizens in the true sense of that word, it involves much more than having an identity card. These new "opinion makers", would act as a force against those coming from nationalistic circles. They would not tell people what to think, rather, they would motivate/stimulate people to think, especially about the things that nationalists do not mention. It seems that, here and now, the people need to be provoked to think; to look for different solutions.
To use the sociology of communication vocabulary, we could say: we want to initiate the creation of a different "agenda setting"/ a different "order of business"; to put "on the table" things that have been mentioned so infrequently that they have been forgotten by many.
"The duty" of OSF B&H is not to create a Bosnian nation. Nor is it to "overthrow" the Dayton Constitution. But, we believe that it is in line with the OSF B&H mission (based on the idea of an "open society") to fight for openness of the public political debate on ideas and topics, such as: "changing the Dayton Constitution", "Bosnian nation", "critical observing of ethnic and national", "critique of global capitalism" or "the questionability of neo-liberalism", amongst others. The least that could be achieved is that some of these topics are not immediately discriminated against as "strange", "inappropriate", "hostile", or something equally derogatory.
Firstly, we have to achieve a state whereby the people of "one color" are open to the people of "the other color" and to overcome the fear that this act will be immediately seen by the other side as a weakness of the "opponent" and an admission of their own tactical inferiority; the fear that they will lose something by that act. The realization that we have already lost everything could be a certain beginning, not the beginning of a revolution, but perhaps of an evolution.
During 2003, OSF B&H was looking for individuals and organizations that would want and be capable of responding to the "project task", the basics of which we have outlined here, and offer our support to them. In this way, we identified some potential partners and initiated comprehensive activities.
We will give an example of a project started at the beginning of 2003 entitled "New Views". The proponents of this project are the members of ACIPS, the Association of the Alumni Center for Interdisciplinary Post Graduate Studies of the University of Sarajevo ("European Studies", Sarajevo - Bologna), the people who seriously want to re-define the level of present public debate concerning the burning political issues in the country. This is done through a series of public platforms and through the publishing of a periodical. We could say that these young people are starting to be recognized as the "new players" on the public scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina, people who are not playing according to the established rules of our "swamp" and to the taste of the bosses in the nationalistic propaganda headquarters. By coming forward in such a way these people are now taking a place next to the civil activists who have been waging their battle for a long while now. Perhaps this fact gives them the strength not to give up yet, or to shake off the understandable lethargy they must feel seeing themselves almost as some sort of Don Quixotes left to "their madness".
Another project that has our support started at the beginning of this year: "Inter Nos" (affiliated to the publishing house/bookshop Buybook). Its proponents are also young people who started a complex process that has two main activities: firstly organizing public debates for broad spectrum of themes and secondly capacity building for critical discussion on social issues where the target groups are the final year secondary school students (through special study groups/circles).
With our support, a complex activity, coordinated by the Center for Promoting Civil Society is being carried out. It is called "Initiative for producing the Strategy of a Sustainable Development of the Non-governmental Sector in B&H". The Center assembled over 200 non-governmental organizations from around B&H. The program has five basic segments, or, as they call them in the Center, "work tables": (1) Concept of Development of Civil Society in B&H"; (2) Program/Agreement on Cooperation of the Government and Non-governmental Sector in B&H"; (3) "Rules/Codex of Conduct of Non-governmental Organization in B&H"; (4) "Standards of Quality of Offering Services of Non-governmental organizations and the Government"; and (5) "Program of Cooperation of Non-governmental Organizations and the Community of Donors".
OSF B&H remains open to new initiatives. We are carefully monitoring the initiated processes and together with their protagonists we are learning from them. We understand that all these actions will not provide "spectacular" results and create conditions for quick change. However, the people who will participate in these activities are the people who will move everyone forward and, whilst doing that, more importantly, will think independently. It is not us who will change things - they are the ones who will change them.