Center for Strategic and International Studies
49 Steps to Improve Human Rights and Security in the North Caucasus

WASHINGTON, September 18, 2007­ The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Human Rights & Security Initiative Director Sarah E. Mendelson has authored a new report, 49 Steps To Improve Human Rights and Security in the North Caucasus.

The report can be found by clicking: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070918_49steps_english.pdf

Please read a synopsis of the report by Dr. Mendelson below:

49 Steps To Improve Human Rights and Security in the North Caucasus By Sarah E. Mendelson Washington, DC, September 18, 2007

For well over a decade, the North Caucasus has been the site and source of rising levels of violence, instability, and terrorism. The perilous situation there has often led policymakers and the wider donor community inside and outside Russia to conclude that little can be done to help increase security and stability in the region. To date, the Russian government has greatly complicated, and often restricted, the ability of donors to engage in this region. At the same time, the international response has often been deeply conflicted, ambivalent and ineffectual. Within the same international organization, one finds those who want to berate, sanction and isolate the Russian government, while others try relentlessly to keep channels open, even when the pay-off is minute.

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 activists­inside and outside government, in the United States, Europe and Russia­we 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 has been supported by generous funds from the Robert Bosch Stiftung and 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.

On the third anniversary of Beslan and the first anniversary of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, we offer these recommendations as an appeal to both the Russian government and the international community as a whole to recommit resources to help ensure security and respect for human rights for those who live in the North Caucasus­particularly with an eye on the next generation. In short, increased donor attention to the varied regions within the North Caucasus is an urgent security and human rights imperative.

The breadth of the recommendations is considerable and includes:

Greater donor coordination; Increased support for civil society­in particular human rights NGOs and independent media­on the ground; 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, as well as the difficulties of generating the political will to support them. We do so, however, with the belief that, if comprehensively implemented, they would contribute to security and stability in the region.