Online Advocacy Seminar | 8 July 2021 | 9:30 – 16:30 Kyiv time

Background

After seven years since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in eastern Ukraine and more than six years after the Minsk Agreements have been signed, progress in peace negotiations and conflict management has been limited. Both the Normandy Format and the Trilateral Contact Group’s work are suffering from the phenomenon of “bad faith negotiations”. At the same time, we can observe a dynamic development in the occupied territories in Donbas which are gradually incorporated into the Russian economic, legal, and cultural orbit.

These challenging broader developments might be an opportunity for an international civil society platform to provide actors involved in the political negotiations with tailored advice on how to ensure an ongoing dialogue between people on both sides of the contact line and in Russia, to advice on creative projects on local and inter-regional conflict management, and to develop long-term joint visions on conflict resolution and reintegration.

About the seminar

The one-day seminar is open for civil society organizations interested in the topic and willing to contribute to develop a better link between Track 1, 1.5 and Track 2 initiatives. It will cover specific modalities, access points and subjects of interaction with the respective structures, as well as the limits of inclusion that civil society faces and has to respect. We will also go through the lessons learned from the successes and failures of the past in our cooperation with political actors. In that way the seminar will also contribute to the advocacy work of the CivilMPlus platform.

The main objective is to bring all seminar participants to the same, informed level of knowledge on the negotiation process. After such a basis is laid, we will be able to speak about the respective role of civil society in these formats in a productive and strategic way. The seminar participants will leave with a clear picture on whom to speak to and what to offer to influence political negotiation processes.

Speakers:

We have invited academic experts from the field of peacebuilding concentrating on civil society inclusion; practitioners from international organizations which have worked on access strategies towards the occupied territories; and NGO experts specializing in the field of civil society cooperation in protracted conflicts, and diplomats working in the respective political negotiation formats.

To take part in the seminar, please, register here.

Additional questions could be addressed to [email protected].

Program

Time	Topic	Speaker
9:30-9:40	Introduction to the seminar	Dr. André Härtel, coordinator of International Advocacy, CivilMPlus Dr. Tetiana Kyselova, associate professor, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy; director and founder, Mediation and Dialogue Research Center at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
9:40-11:15	‘Connecting Civil Society to the Minsk Negotiations: Possible Modalities and Approaches’	Dr. Tetiana Kyselova (an interactive session and a lecture)
11:15-11:30	Coffee Break
11:30-12:30	‘The Trilateral Contact Group and Access Points for Civil Society Organizations’	Rémi Duflot, Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, former advisor and deputy of the Special Representative of the Chairperson-in- Office of the OSCE in Ukraine and in the Trilateral Contact Group
12:30-13:00	Lunch Break
13:00-14:00	‘Bridging Civil Society with Institutional Actors – the Key for Local Ownership’	Dr. Marc Dietrich, Senior Governance Adviser for the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC) in Juba
14:00-14:15	Coffee Break
14:15-15:30	‘Challenges and approaches to strengthen local ownership in agenda-setting processes: Lessons from Georgia/Abkhazia’. Discussion	Sebastian Relitz, Corridors – Dialogue through Cooperation gUG
15:30-16:30	Brainstorming: ‘Alternative Strategies for CSOs to Influence Peace Negotiation Processes’	Dr. Tetiana Kyselova