FINROSFORUM

FINROSFORUM

FINROSFORUM  //  The Finnish-Russian Civic Forum strives to promote cooperation between the peoples of Finland and Russia by supporting civic initiatives for democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech.

Jul 9 / 2:35pm

FINROSFORUM 2010 | Modernisation: From Words to Deeds


The fourth annual conference of the Finnish-Russian Civic Forum, FINROSFORUM 2010, brings together a host of experts on human rights, politics, and the economy from Russia and elsewhere. The conference will be held in the Conference and Cultural Centre Sofia in Helsinki on 21-22 July 2010. The conference venue is located on the picturesque cape of Kallahdenniemi in Helsinki's eastern district of Vuosaari.

The first day of the conference will focus on Russia's need to modernise its political and economic system. Taking part in the discussion will be Boris Nemtsov, Russia's former Deputy Prime Minister, Ilya Ponomaryov, member of Russia's State Duma, Andrey Piontkovsky, Russian scientist and political analyst, Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, and many others. The full list of speakers is available on our website.

The second day of the conference will be devoted to a discussion about the need to create new forms of civil society cooperation between the EU and Russia. A project to establish an EU-Russia Civil Society Forum [pdf] will be presented at the forum. Leading actors in Russia's human rights movement and civic society have been invited to take part in the discussion. Fraser Cameron, Director of the EU-Russia Centre, and Heidi Hautala, Chair of the Finnish-Russian Civic Forum, will present the project.

The conference is open to the public and participation in the event is free of charge. Registration for the conference is open at http://finrosforum.fi/pages/registration.

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Jun 30 / 1:10am

Nations in Transit 2010: Russia Declining

The prestigious watchdog Freedom House published on Tuesday the 14th edition of the study Nations in Transit, which is a comparative study of democratic development in 29 countries from Central Europe to Eurasia. The overarching conclusion is that 2009 was a year of broad, cross-regional pressures on democratic developments: scores declined for 14 of the 29 countries. Over the past five years, eight of the ten new EU states have undergone declines in their overall democracy scores.

However, with the grave situation for defenders of human rights and democracy growing worse in 2009, Nations in Transit findings show that over the past decade, Russia [pdf] has undergone the largest decline of any country in the study. In terms of population, nearly 80 percent of residents of the former Soviet Union - some 221 million people - still live in entrenched authoritarian settings where they are deprived of basic political rights.

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Jan 20 / 11:56am

US Congressmen decry Surkov's role

A group of 71 US congressmen, mainly Republicans, have sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding that the administration withdraw from the working group on civil society of the top-level Russian-American Commission until the Kremlin replaces the group's Russian coordinator, first deputy head of Russia's presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov.

While supporting the setting up of the Commission, Russian human rights defenders expressed discontent with Surkov's appointment as the coordinator of the working group on civil society, associating him with measures to "curtail the freedom of the press, to stifle free competition within the political system, and to build barriers against the development of civil society."

http://eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/12252/

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Filed under // Civil Society Obama Russia USA

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