UKRAINIAN CENTER FOR COMMON GROUND
Program Overview
The Ukrainian Center for Common Ground (UCCG), established in 1994, works towards promoting restorative social transformation in Ukraine: away from post-Soviet alienation and disempowerment and towards a culture of democratic participation and cooperation. Informing all of UCCG’s work is our vision of transforming the country by cultivating the Ukrainians’ personal stake in their future. UCCG does this primarily by promoting the attitudes and skills necessary for Ukrainians to identify and solve their problems and conflicts in a peaceful and non-adversarial way.
In addition to the economic and legal havoc wrought by the disintegration of the centrally planned Soviet government, that state’s collapse left Ukraine without a functioning civil society. Soviet control over people’s actions was removed, but no individual capacity for cooperative problem solving or conflict resolution replaced it.
Our multidimensional conflict-resolution programs in Ukraine complement a variety of more traditional development and technical-assistance strategies, including building civil society, economic restructuring, and strengthening the rule of law. We are helping diverse ethnic and cross-sectoral groups in Ukraine to develop new tools and skills to manage disputes, to transform their negotiations, and ultimately to change both attitudes and behavior regarding conflict.
Over the next few years, UCCG intends to expand its activities in four areas as represented by these four projects: problem-solving initiative in the educational system; alternative dispute resolution (mediation) in the judicial system; increasing the scope of the conflict resolution and prevention network; and enlarging the Crimean dialogue initiative.
ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION (MEDIATION) IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM
To provide alternatives for Ukrainians to the unresponsive approach of their judicial system, we have established court-based alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services within the Donetsk and Odessa regional courts. Since 1999, UCCG and the Donetsk and Odessa regional mediation groups have been working with a corps of Ukrainian judges whom we have trained in mediation and who have instituted mediation processes in Ukrainian courts. The judges use this program to complement efforts that promote the rule of law, because it aids in the management of their caseloads and can provide disputants with options when they go to court.
Currently we are collaborating with the newly established Academy of Judges of Ukraine in conducting workshops on Alternative Dispute Resolution for the newly appointed judges of the general district courts and judges of commercial courts. We anticipate further partnering with the Academy in training mediators as well as developing and implementing court-connected dispute-resolution processes.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE INITIATIVE
UCCG has launched a restorative justice initiative to develop and institutionalize the movement to reform criminal justice in Ukraine. Restorative justice is based on the concept of providing adequate restitution to the victim for the physical and emotional harm caused by the crime as well as the restoration of the sense of responsibility for the offender. The latter is especially important in juvenile cases. Victim-offender mediation is one of the most pervasive forms of restorative justice.
The initiative seeks to introduce Restorative Justice into the Ukrainian Legal System by developing a cadre of specialists able to advance the project and pilot the Victim-Offender Mediation Program. This team of specialists is designing and developing a model applicable to the Ukrainian legal system, and once developed, will implement and institutionalize relevant models into the legal system to supplement the existing system. The pilot project is now implemented in Kyiv in partnership with The Supreme Court of Ukraine, Academy of Judges, Ministry of Justice and General Prosecution Academy. This provides better opportunities for UCCG and Ukrainian Legal System officials to evaluate and monitor the process. The project is divided into five phases and run over three years.
PROBLEM-SOLVING INITIATIVE IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Confidence, communication, and cooperation are learned behaviors, not innate human capabilities. In this post-Soviet period of transition, we must teach the next generation the skills they need to gain control over their own lives. In the process, we want to create a culture of cooperative problem solving – not confrontation.
UCCG has been training Ukrainian school teachers and administration in Odessa, Crimea, Vinnitsa, Sumy, Kyiv and Mariupol to design and implement model school conflict-resolution centers for further application and dissemination in the Ukrainian educational system.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PREVENTION NETWORK
UCCG has an immense amount of substantive institutional knowledge and a network of practitioners that can be harnessed for conflict-resolution development. We have established a listserv called “Conflict Resolution and Prevention in Ukraine” for the exchange of information and ideas on this subject, which is now incorporated into a wider web-based conflict-resolution resource,
The goal of the web site is to provide information on cooperative approaches to conflicts and existing practices and methodologies in conflict resolution. It also includes news, an on-line library, glossary, and links to other Internet resources in conflict resolution, as well as a forum for both specialists and a wider audience interested in conflict resolution. This new web site will be particularly useful for non-English speakers in NIS countries, providing information in Ukrainian and Russian.
CRIMEAN DIALOGUE
During the Soviet era, Crimean Tatars and many other smaller ethnic groups were deported en masse to Central Asia. The return of these formerly deported minority peoples adds considerably to the typical post-Soviet strains on an already fragile social and economic infrastructure. Despite the Crimeans’ stated desire to live peaceably with their neighbors, conditions there are in some ways reminiscent of those in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Although there has been no large-scale violence in Crimea to date, the parallel with Yugoslavia should not go unnoticed and demands intervention.
We have established two mediation groups in Crimea. We have also developed a Crimea Dialogue project (that since 1999 expanded to ten regions of Crimea) that works to bring together diverse local around issues like unemployment, citizenship, ecology, discrimination, and religion-based problems. Our work in Crimea involves the use of problem-solving skills that, while second nature in the West, are lacking in post-Soviet Ukraine.
In addition to the local working groups, we are expanding our conflict-prevention tools by developing small projects involving Crimean youth, such as peace camps focused on the multiethnic heritage of Crimea, and cultural-diversity management skills. Furthermore, drawing from our experiences in “reconciliation radio” in Africa, the Balkans, and the United States, a new conflict-prevention radio drama for young adults in Crimea has been produced in 2002. Designed to model new ways of working together across social and ethnic lines, the radio drama Nasha Ulitsa,created in collaboration with the Youth and Children Theatre on Moskoltso, depicts the complexities of conflict centered around everyday pressures on young adults, including school, drugs, parents, relationships, friends, government, and religion. It is the first radio drama produced specifically for young adults, aged 14-21, in Crimea. In winter 2002 the 13-episode pilot series aired on Russian Radio and Gala Radio (Simferopol).
Ukrainian Center for Common Ground is a program of Search for Common Ground and the European Centre for Common Ground, international NGOs working as partners in the fields of conflict resolution and media production. For additional information, see our website, , or contact us at 1601 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009, USA; phone (+1) (202)265-4300; fax (+1) (202)232-6718; e-mail .
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