Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Central and Eastern Europe

Civil society peacebuilding has a distinctive history in Central and Eastern Europe. The region’s civic organisations did not learn conflict transformation from textbooks; they emerged from it, carrying societies through the negotiated ends of communist rule and then through the raw first decades of democratic statehood. When ten Central and Eastern European countries joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007, those same organisations found themselves on the other side of the table, helping their governments become aid donors and exporting the craft of dialogue, mediation and civic participation that their own transitions had demanded.

This piece looks at how that shift happened, what research found about its growing pains, and why networks such as Partners for Democratic Change became the connective tissue between new member states, Brussels institutions and conflict-affected societies much further away.

From aid recipients to emerging donors

Accession turned the region’s states into contributors to the EU’s development and external policies almost overnight, and their aid programmes had to be built from scratch. Research supervised by Partners for Democratic Change International between 2008 and 2010 examined external assistance and peacebuilding priorities in seven member states, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Bulgaria alongside Spain, Portugal and Greece, and published the results as country studies and a synthesis titled “Does Peacebuilding Matter in Development Aid?”.

The findings were encouraging and uncomfortable in equal measure. Newer member states were rapidly developing donor capacities in line with international frameworks, and national NGO platforms were training the civic sector to act as implementing partners for governments and the EU. But not all state and non-governmental actors were aware of why a peacebuilding perspective belonged in development work at all, and even those familiar with the concept were not applying conflict-sensitive approaches systematically across planning, programming and evaluation. Enthusiasm had outrun method. The case of one new donor is examined in detail in this study of Bulgarian development assistance and peacebuilding.

Partners for Democratic Change

The organisation at the centre of that research illustrates the region’s trajectory. Partners for Democratic Change built a network of independent, locally registered centres for conflict management and civic cooperation from the early 1990s onward, with strong roots in Central and Eastern Europe. By the late 2000s the network, Partners for Democratic Change International, counted first fifteen and then twenty member organisations across Europe, Africa, the Americas, Indonesia and the Middle East, with a Brussels secretariat established in 2006 to connect the network to EU institutions and the NGO community. Its stated purpose was to advance civil society, good governance and a culture of change and conflict management, and its successor network continues that work today as PartnersGlobal.

The network’s method was practical rather than declaratory: training manuals for mainstreaming peacebuilding into development practice were tested with trainers in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Bulgaria before wider release, and members ran mediation training, community conciliation commissions and structures for the peaceful management of local disputes. The approach treated conflict management as a transferable civic skill, not a diplomatic monopoly.

What civil society brings to peacebuilding

The peacebuilding framework these organisations worked from rests on five principles: locally owned, inclusive, long term, centred on human rights and justice, and comprehensive. Each is an argument for civil society involvement. Local ownership requires actors rooted in the affected communities. Inclusion means reaching the marginalised groups whose exclusion drove the violence. Long-term engagement outlasts any mission mandate or funding cycle. EU policy formally recognised this in the Council Conclusions on Security and Development of November 2007, which named civil society a key actor spanning peacebuilding and development, and the Union’s Peace-building Partnership channelled crisis-preparedness work directly to non-governmental specialists, a policy context set out in this analysis of EU conflict prevention policy. In Brussels, the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office has aggregated the sector’s voice since 2001 and remains its platform at eplo.org.

Lessons from the statebuilding research

What should all this civic energy actually do in fragile states? A 2009 synthesis by Edward Bell of International Alert, drawing on country studies of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Georgia and Pakistan, offered a caution that Central and Eastern European practitioners were well placed to hear. Western donors, it found, tend to promote governance through a standard package, executive capacity, parliaments, civil service and an active civil society, conceived out of western experience and often supply-driven.

“Changes within formal institutions and headline initiatives on ‘corruption’ may amount to very little if the broader political culture and expectations of ordinary people are not also steadily transformed in the political and socio-economic spheres.”

The research documented the dilemmas concretely. Elections held as set-piece events, without years of accompanying work on accountability, entrenched ruling parties in Angola and the DRC rather than constraining them. Devolution of power sometimes consolidated central control, as in Pakistan, whose state-society dynamics are analysed in this Pakistan state-society analysis. In South Kivu it was not election that made leaders accountable but physical closeness to the population. The recommendations that followed put civil society at the centre of unglamorous work: widening shared identity across community lines, citizen education that goes beyond voter drives, involving people in public revenue and budget monitoring, and levelling the field between women and men. Guidance for donors on the same terrain is collected by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, whose evaluation and governance work the research repeatedly drew on.

The region’s particular contribution

Central and Eastern European civil society brings something to this agenda that older donors cannot: recent, first-hand experience of transformation. Its practitioners have lived through the renegotiation of a social contract, the reform of security services built for repression, the opening of secret police archives and the contested politics of memory, the same processes that transitional justice and statebuilding programmes attempt elsewhere. The Stockholm Programme of December 2009 acknowledged the point inside the Union itself, assigning the EU a role in helping member states deal with crimes committed by totalitarian regimes so that the memory of those crimes becomes collective and shared.

The credibility this history confers is a working asset. A Polish or Bulgarian trainer discussing decentralisation in the South Caucasus, or a Czech NGO advising on civic oversight of ministries, speaks from inside the experience of transition rather than above it. The task the research of the late 2000s left the region is still open: to turn that credibility into systematically conflict-sensitive aid, so that the newest donors in Europe become the most fluent in peacebuilding rather than the least. The broader case for fusing peace and development practice is made in this guidance on integrating peacebuilding into development, and further reading is collected under the journal’s Development & Peace section.

Frequently asked questions

What is civil society peacebuilding?

Civil society peacebuilding is the work of non-governmental organisations, community groups and civic networks in preventing and transforming violent conflict: dialogue facilitation, mediation training, civic education, monitoring of institutions and support to victims. It complements official diplomacy with local ownership and long-term presence.

Why is Central and Eastern Europe significant for peacebuilding?

The region combines recent experience of democratic transition with new status as EU donor states. Its civil society organisations carry practical knowledge of transforming institutions, dealing with the past and restoring a social contract, which they now apply as implementers and advisers in conflict-affected countries.

What is Partners for Democratic Change?

Partners for Democratic Change built a network of independent local centres for conflict management and civic cooperation from the early 1990s, with strong roots in Central and Eastern Europe. Its international network, PDCI, grew to twenty member organisations with a Brussels secretariat from 2006, and continues today as PartnersGlobal.

What did PDCI’s research on new EU donors find?

Studies covering Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal and Greece found that new donors were building aid capacity quickly, but that awareness of peacebuilding among state and NGO actors was uneven and conflict-sensitive approaches were not applied systematically across planning, implementation and evaluation.

What are the core principles of peacebuilding?

Five principles recur across practice: peacebuilding should be locally owned, inclusive of marginalised groups, long term, centred on human rights and justice, and comprehensive, spanning activities from early warning through post-conflict reconstruction.

How does the EU support civil society peacebuilding?

The 2007 Council Conclusions on Security and Development recognised civil society as a key actor, and instruments such as the Peace-building Partnership under the Instrument for Stability and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights fund non-governmental peacebuilding work, often without requiring host-government consent.

Why are elections alone not enough to build peace?

Research in Angola and the DRC showed that elections held as one-off events, without sustained work on accountability and political culture, can entrench dominant parties and local power holders. Lasting change requires programmes before, during and for years after the vote that alter how citizens and officials relate.

What is conflict-sensitive development?

Conflict-sensitive development means designing aid with an understanding of local conflict dynamics so that interventions do not aggravate grievances and, where possible, actively strengthen peace. It applies at every stage of the programme cycle, from analysis and planning through implementation and evaluation.

What role did civil society play in the region’s own transitions?

Civic movements negotiated the end of communist rule, monitored the first free elections, pressed for the opening of secret police archives and helped reform institutions built for repression. That experience is the basis of the region’s credibility in peacebuilding work abroad.

What is the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office?

EPLO is the Brussels-based platform of European NGOs, NGO networks and think tanks working on peacebuilding. Founded in 2001, it promotes sustainable peacebuilding policies among EU decision-makers and coordinates the sector’s engagement with the institutions.

How does statebuilding relate to civil society?

Statebuilding is about strengthening state-society relations, not just state capacity. Research on Angola, the DRC, Georgia and Pakistan concluded that donors need civil society to transform political culture, hold local officials accountable and widen people’s sense of shared citizenship, tasks formal institutions cannot perform alone.