Protecting Eurasia’s Dispossessed: A Practical Guide for NGOs Working on Issues of Forced Migration in the Former Soviet Union


159 pp., 1996, Open Society Institute, New York

The Open Society Institute is a private operating foundation established in 1993 to “promote the development of open societies around the world.” Its Forced Migration Projects currently center on the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Haiti. Since 1991, according to OSI, more than five million people have been uprooted by the conflicts and changes that have accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Protecting Eurasia’s Dispossessed is “designed to encourage non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to work on migration-related issues in the former Soviet Union.”

The book is not quite as tightly focused on issues of forced migration as its title suggests, but it contains a wealth of useful material nonetheless. The first third consists of essays analyzing the new independent states’ emerging third sector. Chapters are titled “The Rise of NGOs,” “The Lessons Learned: 1990-Present,” and “Major Needs of the Local NGO Sector.”

The middle third of the book provides country-by-country “profiles,” but these are very brief and the information appears to have been somewhat randomly selected. The section on Belarus, for example, states that Chernobyl was responsible for “the majority of Belarus’s displaced population,” but then says very little more about this population or how NGOs are serving it (or could be serving it).

The last third of the book contains a 21-page annotated list of NGOs based in the former Soviet Union, a shorter list of Western-based NGOs and clearinghouses, a “bibliography on NGO experience,” and an analysis of legislation affecting NGOs in the region. For a copy of Protecting Eurasia’s Dispossessed, contact:

Open Society Institute
Forced Migration Projects
888 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10106
Tel: (212) 887-0655
E-mail: [email protected]

This article is from the July/August 1996 issue of
Civil Society ... East and West

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The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/96-07/euramig.htm
Last updated: October 8, 1996

Center for Civil Society International
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