The project aims to create a sustainable network of civil society organizations and experts for a democratic Belarus with partners from Germany, Poland and Belarus. The Project is based on the Working Group (“Arbeitskreis Belarus”) of German organizations interested in Belarus/expertise on Belarus, which has been in existence since September 2020 and includes about 100 institutions/experts (as of March 30, 2021). The Project plans numerous activities with civil society and expert institutions, such as online discussions / networking within the aforementioned working group, expert discussions / scenario workshops and strategic documents on Belarus, advocacy activities, co-organization of the Congress for Belarus Studies, a monthly newsletter on Belarus, and institutional support and know-how for the Belarusian diaspora in Germany.
The European debate on Belarus is now more important than ever: the Russian war in Ukraine and its consequences for the region cannot be understood or dealt with without taking into account the Belarusian perspective. The situation calls for a closely coordinated response from the EU and European civil society. Meanwhile, the Lukashenko regime’s repression of Belarusian civil society and the opposition continues.
The network is coordinated by: Austausch e.V. an international, non-governmental, non-profit organization based in Berlin. Since the late 1990s, Austausch has been working with partners across Eastern and Central Europe in the fields of education, media, history, ecology, civic engagement and democracy, integration, human rights.
The network’s activities are carried out jointly with partner organizations operating in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Germany:
- Jan Nowak-Jezioranski College of Eastern Europe (KEW)
- Belarusian Community RAZAM e.V.
- Center of the Belarusian Solidarity (CBS)
- Honest People
- Human Rights in Belarus e.V.
- The Institute of Political Studies “Political Sphere”
➡ More information: https://net4belarus.org/
As a part of this initiative, we co-organised in November 2022 the Roundtable about Belarus. It took place at KEW’s headquarters in the castle in Wojnowice. Aureliusz Marek Pędziwol kindly shared his photos from the event with us.
Reports (more on the website: https://net4belarus.org/ )
Memory in Belarusian policies towards Germany and Poland (w jęz. angielskim)
Four scenarios for Belarus by the end of 2023 (w jęz. angielskim)
Cztery scenariusze dla Białorusi do końca 2022 roku (in Polish)
Four scenarios for Belarus by the end of 2022 (in English)
Crisis in Belarus: role of Russia and options for the West (in English)
Sociology of protests in Belarus and international assistance (in English)
The project is finances by the German Foreign Ministry as a part of the programme “Civil Society Cooperation in Eastern Europe” and The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Contact: Adam Reichardt
