Czech NGO NESEHNUTÍ will continue to support civil initiatives in South Caucasus and Ukraine in 2015. This will make it possible to continue the journalist campaign for free right to information in Abkhazia, the campaign for monitoring human rights in Nagorno-Kharabakh prisons, the initiative for barrier-free Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, or the initiative for monitoring large companies mining gold by cyanidation in Azerbaijan. NESEHNUTÍ will support independent media in Georgia (http://jnews.ge/) and Ukraine (http://www.hromadske.tv).

NESEHNUTÍ has provided systematic support to civil initiatives, independent journalism, environmental and human rights activists in South Caucasus since 2011. Between 2011 and 2014, NESEHNUTÍ provided support to more than five dozen local projects and initiatives, helped them to plan their civil campaigns, provided trainings and over CZK 2 mil. in grants (EUR 72,000). NESEHNUTÍ has also organized study tours to Europe for 40 activists from South Caucasus.

The cooperation with the initiatives from the Caucasus consists, mainly, of exchange of experience of campaigning and work of independent media and NGOs, expert advice and consulting. “The main part of our work is sharing both positive and negative experience of campaigning by NGOs from the Czech Republic and the Caucasus, and providing opportunities to learn from experts in this field both from the Czech Republic and Caucasus. This itself is more important than the fact that some initiatives also receive financial support from us,“ explained Milan Štefanec from NESEHNUTÍ.

NESEHNUTÍ cooperates with local initiatives and NGOs from all parts of South Caucasus, including areas with a problematic international status. Some of those areas are still under very strong influence from military or armed conflicts which had been taking place on the territory in question, or are still active today. This has a strong impact on NESEHNUTÍ work as well. “Some of the areas where our partners work in the Caucasus are not accessible to us at all; in other areas, we are facing repressive state regimes which, for instance, limits possibilities of local initiatives to receive support from abroad,“ Martin Hyťha, program coordinator, says with regard to the difficulties which workers of NESEHNUTÍ are facing.

In 2014, NESEHNUTÍ expanded its activities including Ukraine where it began to support regional branches of the independent citizen TV Hromadske.TV. „High quality, unbiased reporting is one of the main problems of Ukraine today; for this reason, we targeted our support primarily at independent journalists in Kyiv, Tcherkassy and Kremenchuk. In the coming year, we are going to extend cooperation and begin to provide support to small citizen initiatives,“ Pavla Hofmeisterová from NESEHNUTÍ describes the news.

NESEHNUTÍ is a Czech non-governmental organization and the majority of its activities are concentrated in the Czech Republic. Here it is involved in the areas of environmental protection, human rights, citizen participation, equality between men and women and animal protection. For more information about the organization’s activities see http://initiativeway.org.

Activities of NESEHNUTÍ in the Caucasus and in Ukraine received financial support from Transition Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and International Visegrad Fund.

Contacts:         
Martin Hyťha, program coordinator, The Initiative Way, NESEHNUTÍ, +420 606 104 784, martin@nesehnuti.cz
Milan Štefanec, NESEHNUTÍ, +420 605 239 579, milan.stefanec@nesehnuti.cz
Pavla Hofmeisterová, NESEHNUTÍ, +420 775 367 242, pavla@nesehnuti.cz