Ukrainian Centre for Common Ground (UCCG) - Ukraine

UCCG works to resolve conflict by helping diverse ethnic and cross-sectoral groups in Ukraine develop new tools and skills to manage disputes, to transform their negotiations, and ultimately (it is hoped) to change both attitudes and behaviour regarding conflict. UCCG also aims to apply restorative mechanisms (such as conflict resolution programmes and restorative justice) to existing social institutions, such as courts, schools, and communities. Active projects include:

• Restorative Justice Initiative: launched in 2003, this project aims to develop and institutionalise the movement to reform the judicial sector in Ukraine. UCCG is establishing partnerships with justice system institutions; working to raise awareness about restorative justice approaches in the Ukraine legal system; training a team of volunteer victim-offender mediators; developing a mechanism to determine how cases would be outsourced; creating an evaluation mechanism to assess the effectiveness of the process; strategising about how to disseminate results of the project; and planning an open conference on restorative justice approaches.
• Radio: Conflict Resolution Drama: In 2002, UCCG produced 13 pilot episodes of a conflict prevention radio drama for young adults in Crimea. Designed to model new ways of working together across social and ethnic lines, "Nasha Ulitsa" ("Our Street") depicts the complexities of conflict related to everyday pressures on young adults, including school, drugs, parents, relationships, friends, government, and religion. A key theme is inter-ethnic understanding.
• Crimean Dialogue: two local mediation groups were established in Crimea to resolve issues and concrete problems of common concern (unemployment, citizenship, ecology, discrimination, religious-based issues, etc.). UCCG's main methodology involved facilitating group discussions followed by cooperative action in communities. In 2002, 28 meetings were held in 10 regions of Crimea in order to build each group and help it design appropriate community initiatives. Each group then implemented initiatives in its region. In addition to the local working groups, there are small projects involving Crimean youth, such as peace camps focussed on the multiethnic heritage of Crimea, and cultural-diversity management skills.
• Problem Solving Education Initiative: conflict resolution skills trainings at the elementary-school, middle-school, and high-school level. Peer Mediation programmes for high school students (in collaboration with UNESCO-associated schools in Ukraine) are being piloted. Annual negotiation trainings have been conducted for Ukrainian diplomats at the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• Conflict Resolution and Prevention Network: an electronic list serv providing a forum for the exchange of information and ideas related to conflict resolution and prevention in Ukraine, which is now incorporated into a wider web-based conflict-resolution resource, Common Ground. The goal of the website is to provide information to Russian/Ukrainian speakers on cooperative approaches to conflicts and existing practices and methodologies in conflict resolution. It also includes news, an online 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.

Programme organisers explain that 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, they say, to the typical post-Soviet strains on an already fragile social and economic infrastructure. UCCG notes that, in addition to the economic and legal havoc wrought by the disintegration of the centrally-planned Soviet government, the State's collapse left the Ukrainian people with no capacity for cooperative problem solving or conflict resolution.

Since its inception, UCCG has facilitated the establishment of 8 dispute resolution centres across the country with 25 staff members and over 100 volunteers, including psychologists, journalists, lawyers, judges, private entrepreneurs, writers, teachers, and students.

The SFCG is a not-for-profit NGO that has been working in conflict prevention and conflict resolution since 1995. It collaborates closely with European Institutions, EU member states' governments, the United Nations, and local and international NGOs in order to introduce techniques of peaceful conflict resolution in areas of extreme tension.