49 Steps To Improve Human Rights and Security in the North Caucasus

Available in English, Russian, and French

For well over a decade, the North Caucasus has been the site and source of rising levels of violence, instability, and terrorism.  Unlike other conflicts around the world in which expertise, and political will, as well as vast sums, have been deployed to address, diminish or contain violence, we have seen for many years dramatically less activity surrounding Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus. In collaboration with numerous experts and activists—inside and outside government, in the United States, Europe and Russia—we have sought to challenge that inactivity, through building international policy networks and conducting research with the goal of developing a series of recommendations.  

This report presents an abridged version of the dozens of recommendations generated by the network and the experts we have convened in a series of meetings held in Berlin at the Robert Bosch Stiftung between May 2005 and October 2006.  The breadth of our recommendations is considerable and includes:

Greater donor coordination;

Increased support for civil society in the region—in particular human rights NGOs and independent media;

A focus on next generation projects;

Increased accountability of international organizations engaging in the region;

Outreach to the Russian government;

Increased investment in the North Caucasus by private business;

A multidisciplinary approach to advancing the rule of law in the region.

We offer these 49 recommendations fully aware of their limitations, but with the belief that -- if comprehensively implemented -- they can contribute to security and stability in the region.