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On 23-24 June, 2010 in Washington, simultaneously with the second Presidential Summit of Obama and Medvedev, American and Russian civic organizations held a meeting, called Civic Society Summit. It was dedicated to the discussion of joint efforts of NGOs from both sides to develop Russian-American cooperation and to consider new possibilities for interaction of civic representatives from both countries.
Over 40 representatives from the 3rd sector of US and Russia took part in the work of 10 sections of the summit. Moderators of the group discussion on human rights protection were Yuri Gibladze, President of the Human Rights and Democracy Development Center and Dmitri Makarov, YHRM Coordination Council Member. The group has suggested 6 priority areas in the civic society cooperation for human rights protection: penitentiary system, police reform, court system reform, prevention of hate crimes, migration, counter-terrorism security. Some theme-lines were also brought for both countries to collaborate on.
Further format and conditions of American-Russian civic society dialogue were also suggested to be defined. “It is supposed to be a continuous process in all varied shapes, not necessarily tied to the official high-level meetings. The objective is to influence mutually the agenda of those meetings and the actions of our governments concerning important issues for us,” comments Dmitri Makarov. “Moreover, the aim of the civic dialogue is not only lobbing and joint projects drafting, but also the development of the general civic agenda as far as possible, and building up strategic partnership for civic organizations of our countries’.
A lot of the summit participants supported the proposition to build a permanent Coordinating Organ that would direct the process of the civic dialogue and promote the involving of more and more different organizations from both countries. The second day of the summit was devoted to the presentations of the achieved agreements across sections and innovations technologies serving the civic society. US State Secretary Hillary Clinton held a speech in front of the summit participants. Among the active members of the summit there was also Ivan Ninenko, YHRM member and Vice-President of Transparency International-Russia, who moderated the work group on corruption counteraction. The Washington visit gave YHRM the opportunity to meet different youth and civic groups and to discuss the opportunities to promote itself in North America.