CeSID activities in the south of Serbia and the project ‘Guide through local self-government’

Founders of PROTECTA took part in initial trainings for monitoring elections, thereby contributing to the establishment of CeSID (Centre for Free and Democratic Elections) in 1998. Since the establishment of CeSID, PROTECTA’s office has acted as CeSID’s regional office for Southern Serbia and it has implemented programmes related to direct and indirect monitoring of elections, as well as those related to development of democracy. In 2004, Nis CeSID’s office became the first regional office independently implementing the project at the national level, with the help of the developed network of CeSID’s coordinators and offices. The project ‘Guide through new local self-government’ followed pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral process in a unique way that has not yet been seen in this part of Europe. Since it was about local elections, this project made Nis CeSID the only organisation in the country (including the state institutions as well)  have database on all 70,000 candidates for local elections, as well as all other information about political organisations, groups of citizens, pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral process. This information was made available both to citizens and media. By doing so, PROTECTA wanted to compensate for the first time applied proportional system for the election of local councilmen. CeSID was the only organisation having a comprehensible database so that media used explicitly CeSID’s statistics about local elections. Consequently, analyses of the results of local elections were much more impartial than those of political parties and independent analysts. One of the results of the project is the first directory of local self-governments in Serbia and the study tackling the topic ‘Who in Serbia deals with policy at the local level’. Nis CeSID designed and implemented the project and did fundraising. The project worth 120,000 USD was supported by Democracy Commission USA, Westminster Foundation for Democracy UK and Rockefeller Brothers Fund USA.

Campaign for appealing on citizens to get out and vote

Since the September 2000 federal presidential elections, which were followed with protests and the 5th October related events, until the latest 2004 local elections, PROTECTA has conducted campaigns for appealing on citizens to get out and vote. Unlike numerous other campaigns, PROTECTA’s campaigns include public advocacies which helped PROTECTA promote principles of responsibility of politicians in power and those running pre-electoral campaigns. By educating citizens about competencies and bodies to be elected, PROTECTA is trying to make citizens have higher expectations of their candidates.  PROTECTA is also very much proud of taking part in a unique campaign ‘Nis NGOs’ support for the strike’, which was conducted in cooperation with Nis NGOs in between the 2000 September elections and the 5th October.

Education and capacity building of CeSID’s network of coordinators

A series of training helped CeSIDs’ coordinators to get qualified for independent writing project proposals and independent fundraising. This activity is of major importance in the light of CeSID’s wish to meet the real needs in local communities, related to the development of democratic processes, and point out to the sustainability issue of a huge centralised network of offices.

Introduction of human rights related themes to secondary schools in Southern Serbia

The programme ‘Educational Server’ included professors of subjects of social sciences in secondary schools in Southern Serbia, who completed a six-month education about human rights and values of civil society. The programme was patterned upon that of Dedalus from Sarajevo and its novelty was the use of information technologies in education. The programme is based on the computer CD in eight languages and it contains more than 800 text pages about human rights. The professors gained knowledge about the most efficient use of Internet when searching for data on human rights, cases of human rights violations and reports on the situation of human rights. The programme was funded by UNESCO.