Internal Developments Among ngOs

There are essentially two types of development within the NGO sphere: those affecting individual NGOs and those concerning relations among NGOs, such as coalition building.

With regard to the evolution within individual NGOs, many interviewees mentioned that on the whole civil-society organizations had become more professionalised since the Orange Revolution. Apparently, a learning process has taken place, during which many organizations became first weaker then stronger. This is in large part due to the departure of some NGO leaders for the political realm, as mentioned above. This led to the collapse of some organizations, as well as to the consolidation of others, and exposed the frequent lack of depth within the leadership and in some cases the relative dependence on one charismatic figure. However, those organizations that remained (or emerged) have learned from these experiences and become internally stronger, although this process is not yet completed. Despite this concern with the internal sustainability of the organization and its leadership, issues of governance within the organization have not been a priority for the majority of NGOs.

Some external observers complained about the politicisation of NGOs and their perception that no organization is truly "independent". Within the organizations this issue emerged in the form of needing to decide whether or not to cooperate with particular political forces. While some NGOs worked closely with a specific party or bloc, others explicitly opted to remain neutral and open to cooperation with all sides.

Many organizations had recently rethought their overall strategy or were in the process of doing so. While it is difficult to generalise about the interview results on this point, many respondents pointed to a strong trend toward local community development, both among donors and NGOs. They claimed to observe a growing desire of many individuals to get together to address issues that affect their everyday lives, such as the construction of a playground or the disappearance of parks and other green "oases" from their cities. In addition, the increasing importance of youth organizations was stressed by numerous respondents. These were presented for example as being uncontaminated by the "grant-eating" culture of the 1990s, during which numerous NGOs sprang up in response to the multitude of grants offered by external donors. (This phenomenon was also then capitalised upon by the Ukrainian government to "demonise" NGOs as carrying out foreign agendas rather than representing the interests of segments of Ukrainian society.) In contrast to these trends, the focus on European integration, while present in various NGOs, was not particularly popular. Reasons given for this lack of popularity were that this niche (support for European integration) has already been occupied by certain political forces within the government, and that it is uncontroversial as there is no real "counter-movement" working against such integration.

With regard to relations among NGOs, for a variety of reasons coordination in general and the building of coalitions in particular were seen as difficult by domestic and external actors alike. Many respondents stressed the unwillingness of NGO activists to give up their own status or leading position through cooperation with other groups. While some interviewees granted that coalitions were formed when this was required by external donors, others characterised these as ''pseudo-coalitions" and emphasised that real coalitions came into being only on thematic lines. Coordination was seen as possible to the extent that the participating NGOs were genuinely interested in the exchange of information. The human rights sphere was frequently mentioned as one in which there had been effective coordination leading to genuine input into the policy process. Thus success stories do exist, but the Ukrainian context does not currently encourage the building of productive coalitions. This may be further hindered by the relative lack of successful coordination among external donors, which leads to a certain duplication of efforts. Most respondents, both domestic and foreign, believed that the existing formats for exchange of information among external donors were superficial and unproductive, and stressed the importance of informal communication for the emergence of useful cooperation mechanisms.

Conclusion

Some tentative conclusions can be drawn regarding a) the main changes in the NGO sphere since the Orange Revolution and b) the current situation of NGOs and their future prospects in the context of the further development of Ukraine's relations with the EU.

With regard to developments after the Orange Revolution, the main finding is that there has been relatively little change, especially considering the expectations of civil-society actors during and immediately after the events of late 2004 and early 2005. In particular, the entrance of certain prominent civil society activists into the political sphere did not bring positive consequences for the dialogue between NGOs and state structures to the degree hoped for. Nonetheless, there have been some slight and gradual improvements, on which NGO activists hope to build in the future. Nor was there a boom in external funding as a result of the role played by Ukrainian civil society during the revolution, in fact, some external donors began to organize their departure or reduce their involvement, while there was some increase in domestic donor involvement (especially the business sector) in certain areas, such as assistance for vulnerable social groups. The looming decrease in foreign funding as well as increased costs for Ukrainian NGOs meant that the question of financing was of greatest concern for a large majority of organizations. Although the EU is continuing and arguably intensifying its support for Ukrainian civil society, it was acknowledged by most interlocutors that the complex and bureaucratic nature of EU grant procedures still posed too great a challenge for many smaller, less experienced NGOs. In addition, the EU"s expectation that Ukrainian NGOs would serve both as democratising agents and as supporting actors to achieve ENP goals has turned out to be overly ambitious in the current environment. However, another consequence of the Orange Revolution was an overall strengthening of the NGO sphere, which had to cope with the loss of part of its leadership and was therefore forced to confront and address certain structural weaknesses that had previously been ignored. While this led to some processes of consolidation of organizations, it does not seem to have heightened the willingness of NGOs to build coalitions, and most are still reluctant to do so. On the whole, the state of development of Ukraine's civil society does not differ greatly from that of some new EU member states, which provides grounds for optimism.

Although the current situation is rather precarious for some NGOs, most of the active ones appear to be muddling through rather successfully by exploring a variety of funding sources, remaining flexible in their approach while retaining clearly defined foci of expertise and enjoying a high level of commitment of a small group of activists. The civil-society landscape in Ukraine is becoming more complex, with the involvement of business increasing, different types of activism (community-based, youth-oriented) emerging and external donors potentially playing less of a role. This development is in line with the overall political and economic evolution of Ukraine, which has been gradual but more or less steady. Despite the attractiveness of other sectors, NGOs have been able to retain some committed activists, although the situation in most of the regions is reportedly much bleaker than in Kyiv. Thus while no breakthroughs in the area of civil society development are to be expected, the contours of the NGO sphere are becoming clearer and simultaneously more complex, and the overall state of civil society is taking on its own particular character, defined by the specific combination of domestic and external factors in contemporary Ukraine.

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