The RIME Project

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The RIME Project

• Releasing Indigenous Multiculturalism through
  Education
• FINAL CONFERENCE
• 6.09.-10.09.2006
• Varna, Bulgaria

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Round Table Lessons of RIME

• Chair Kasia Wolczuk
• Speakers
• Paula Rauzan, Miralem Tursinovic, Elena
  Omelchenko, Emiliya Balukova, Kateryna
  Shalayeva,
• Nino Kalandarishvili, Hilary Pilkington, Vadim
  Karastalev, Vartan Kukuian, Stanka Parac, Diana
  Kerselyan

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Questions for discussion

• What are the benefits and challenges of
  exchanging experience inter-regionally?
• What are the benefits and challenges of
  NGO-academic dialogue?
• What are the challenges that remain obstacles to
  progress in combating xenophobic attitudes and
  practices?

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• 1. What are the benefits and challenges of
  exchanging experience inter-regionally?
• Speakers
• Paula Rauzan, LDA-Sisak (Croatia)
• Miralem Tursinovic, HCA-Tuzla (Bosnia and
  Herzegovina)
• Elena Omelchenko, Region (Russia)

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The benefits and challenges of exchanging
experience inter-regionally (Elena Omelchenko,
Region, Russia)

• RIME provided the opportunity to engage
  practically in intercultural and interregional
  cooperation. While this is not the only project
  to offer this opportunity, sometimes such
  projects have a declarative and formal approach
  to achieving these aims.
• Often such mutual exchange looks impressive at
  the level of ideas but its implementation is
  hindered by insurmountable hurdles.

• RIME projects, however, have become real
  enactments of inter-regional cooperation.

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The benefits of inter-regional cooperation

• At the broadest level, the benefits of
  collaborative implementation of projects are
• The process of intercultural interaction in and
  of itself.
• The uniting of theory and practice.
• At the specific level there is a direct exchange
  of cultural, academic and personal experience.

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• The most positive experience for us in terms of
  interregional interaction was participation in
  the mini-project Professional Training
  Sociology without borders.
• This collaborative project allowed us to move out
  of the role of experts and into the role of
  colleagues. It provided the basis for harmonious
  and balanced cooperation between RIME partners
  and allowed each participant to enter into a
  unique cultural context. Thus, for example, the
  research methodology was developed jointly with
  colleagues from Abkhazia and adapted to the
  particular situation.
• The high degree of engagement of partners in the
  joint project created a new level of motivation.
  The results of the work are perceived as a common
  achievement. The training took place in parallel
  with a piece of concrete research and the data
  generated were a personal achievement for each
  participant.

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The challenges of interregional cooperation

• Engagement with an unknown cultural context
  demands a higher level of attention to
  professional ethics, tolerance and also to the
  generation of balanced hypotheses and value
  judgements.
• In the course of joint analysis of data some
  difficulties of interpretation emerged
  differences in academic and cultural experience
  generate differences in the interpretation of one
  of and the same concepts. But this is a problem
  that can be resolved in the course of engagement
  with one another.

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• In the course of the Professional training
  project we encountered some specific difficulties
  associated with conducting professional
  sociological training in a post-conflict
  situation. Developing a sociological approach to
  issues provoked an emotional resistance on the
  part of participants. It was tangibly difficult
  for participants to overcome their own
  stereotypes and attitudes they found it hard not
  to interrupt informants, not to impose their own
  point of view, not to respond negatively to the
  experience of informants.
• There were difficulties also for participants in
  being able to devote sufficient time to the
  training. For the majority of participants it was
  hard to find uninterrupted time for the training.
  In particular they needed days off to devote to
  their family and work. These distractions were
  partly because the project was conducted at the
  place of residence of the participants. We
  decided jointly that any future projects of this
  kind should be implemented via a series of
  intensive courses.

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• What are the benefits and challenges of
  NGO-academic dialogue?
• Speakers
• Emiliya Balukova, New way 98 (Bulgaria)
• Nino Kalandarishvili, Centre for Development and
  Cooperation (Georgia)
• Hilary Pilkington, University of Warwick (UK)
• Kateryna Shalayeva, Young womens lobby (Ukraine)

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Hilary Pilkington, University of Warwick (UK)

• Benefits of NGO-academic dialogue
• Importance of time out for reflection.
• Importance of being placed in a situation where
  we have to explain our ideas and our work without
  recourse to professional jargon or tacit/shared
  knowledge. This has the effect of uncluttering
  our minds to allow us to see issues from a new
  perspective or revisit our own assumptions.
  Examples human rights discourse postmodern
  approaches the relationship between research,
  ethics and politics.
• Cross-sectoral collaboration has significant
  creative potential because it asks people to
  cross their normal boundaries, recognise their
  norms as foreign (to others) and to think
  outside their usual boxes.

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• Challenges for NGO-academic dialogue
• The practical difficulties involved in
  implementing cross-sectoral projects are not
  sufficiently recognised in institutional
  frameworks of support and funding. Such projects
  need to be flexible in terms of budget allocation
  and deliverables in order to maximize the chance
  of realising their creative potential.
• Institutional drivers from the different sectors
  inhibit effective collaboration e.g. i)
  recognition of labour ii) evaluation criteria
  iii) product versus process.
• Both sectors are fuelled by the energy of
  individuals but these individuals inhabit very
  different institutional settings. While NGOs are
  reasonably small and flexible organisationally,
  higher education institutions are huge,
  commercially driven and bureaucratically
  regulated organisations with little understanding
  of the context in which individual academics
  work. An important lesson for follow-on projects
  is to secure funding that allows the devolution
  of budgets to individual partners.

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• What are the challenges that remain obstacles to
  progress in combating xenophobic attitudes and
  practices?
• Speakers
• Vadim Karastelev, FRODO (Russia)
• Vartan Kukuian, Centre for Pontic and Caucasian
  Studies (Russia)
• Stanka Parac, LDA Subotica (Serbia)
• Diana Kerselyan, Sukhum Media-club (Abkhazia)

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• Obstacles to progress in combating xenophobic
  attitudes and practices (Vadim Karastelev,
  Novorossiisk Human Rights Committee, Russia)
• Politicians in Moscow not only fail to oppose
  xenophobia but often actually provoke and
  encourage it. In 2006, in Moscow the authorities
  allowed a protest march against illegal migrants,
  for example, to go ahead whilst refusing
  permission for an anti-fascist march to take
  place.
• At the regional level it is to the advantage of
  politicians to heap the blame for the failures of
  repeated reforms on to ethnic minorities. The
  films Before the thunder rumbles and Turkish
  march made at the request of the regional
  administration are models for the propagation of
  fascist ideas today.
• The population largely supports xenophobic
  attitudes and votes for xenophobic politicians.
  Thus, the former Governor of Krasnodar Krai,
  Nikolai Kondratenko, a clear anti-Semite and
  xenophobe, as well as his successor, Aleksandr
  Tkachev, received up to 90 of the popular vote
  in elections.

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• The local mass media are largely under the
  financial and administrative control of the
  regional authorities. Over the last few years the
  regional administration has become the official
  owner of many radio and television companies and
  print media, and has leant on independent
  journalists. In Spring 2006 in Krimskii district
  Cossacks prevented BBC journalists from making a
  film about ethnic discrimination and uniformed
  officials constantly pursued the film crew.
• The law enforcement agencies generally support
  the politicians and fail to take the necessary
  measures. Thus judges ask human rights defenders
  Why do you defend these blacks? The police
  veritably hunt out those with dark skins
  subjecting them for example to a constant
  verification of their documents. At the same time
  Internal Affairs agencies refuse to either
  permanently or temporarily register the majority
  of applicants with non-Russian surnames, often
  extorting bribes in order to resolve issues over
  registration and citizenship.

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• The biggest obstacle is legislation. The
  retention of the notorious Soviet era propiska
  (residence permit) means that all citizens of
  Russia are required to register their residence
  in another region if they stay there longer than
  90 days. Such registration usually requires a
  bribe and is often refused to those with
  non-Russian surnames. The most difficult
  situation is for former citizens of the Soviet
  Union who, on various pretexts, were refused
  Russian citizenship. These people have no
  registration, cannot legally get employment, have
  no social support and the property they buy
  legally is not registered in their names.
• The lack of self-organisation and cooperation
  between ethnic groups, human rights activists,
  journalists and politicians is the main reason
  for the continuation of discriminatory practices.
  Our experience has shown that where people do
  defend themselves, they are, to a greater or
  lesser degree, successful. The problem is that
  only a tiny minority of those experiencing
  discrimination seek cooperation with human rights
  activists or even support the authorities
  actions in order to gain some advantage for
  themselves.

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Tolerance and Diversity Contemporary Challenges,
South Russia, 2000s (Rev. Daniel (Vartan
Kukuian), CPCS)

• Post-Soviet/Post-Socialist Epoch as an analogue
  of Post-Colonial one
• Historical Memory as a component of New
  Nationalistic Ideology and Imperial Illusions of
  the Russian majority
• Rising Regionalism in Modern Russian Province as
  an anti-Migrant Ideology
• Lack of Institutions of the Civil Society and
  Marginalization of anti-Xenophobic forces.

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• Obstacles to progress in combating xenophobic
  attitudes and practices (Diana Kerselyan, Sukhum
  Media-club, Abkhazia)
• There is no clear manifestation of xenophobic
  attitudes in Abkhazian society, including among
  young people.
• However, there is evidence of xenophobia in
  relation to Georgia and Georgians due to the
  bitter and bloody war of 1992-3.
• It is not impossible that a resolution to the
  Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, and thus the
  eradication of the external enemy, might lead
  to the appearance of xenophobic attitudes within
  Abkhazian society.
• One of the factors encouraging xenophobia may be
  a fear on the part of Abkhaz that they would
  become once more a minority and under threat of
  losing their identity, native language, national
  culture and traditions as well as economic
  control.
• The main ways to challenge xenophobia are by
  developing a legally based, democratic society
  and institutions protecting human rights and
  ensuring the internal and external security of
  Abkhazia.