Donor: The Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria (NED grant)
Duration of project: November 2001 – February 2002
Within the project awarded to the Centre for Liberal Strategies (Bulgaria) by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights was assigned to develop a policy document called “Country Report for Serbia”. The document consisted of:– “State of Democracy”- report which identified various obstacles and threats to democratization in Serbia. Special attention was paid to the impact that the crisis in Macedonia and the instability in Kosovo and Albania had on the region as a whole.
– “Road Map for Reform” – report which laid out policy priorities for promoting democracy given the impediments described in the “state of democracy” report. This component of the policy document examined past approaches to democracy promotion on the part of international organizations to determine which have worked and which have not. The “road map” also developed a core set of recommendations for improving democracy assistance based on the specific conditions in the country.
After the collection of data and surveying of the existing literature, the first draft of the report was written by Vesna Petrović and submitted to outside experts Vladimir Bilandžić, Dragan Popadić, Milan Sahović and Zoran Lutovac. After their initial comments, the outside experts were invited to a meeting where the draft report and their reactions to it were discussed with the wider circle of project participants. At that meeting the ideas to be put in the Road Map for Reform were solicited.
The “Country report” was written in Serbian and translated into English, presented to the public in Serbia and in particular to the national policy making community aiming at advocating its implementation. 300 copies of the text were printed and distributed to the journalist and NGO community. Vojin Dimitrijević traveled to Washington to join the authors of other Country Reports for public presentations of their reports. He stayed in Washington from 2 – 9 February and attended meetings organised by NED, in some cases serving as leading panelist.
