Armine Ishkanian
Since 2010, protests sparked by civic initiatives have become
very common in Armenia’s capital Yerevan and, to a lesser extent, in the
smaller cities of Gyumri and Vanadzor. Civic initiatives in Armenia address a
range of issues including the environment, cultural preservation, consumer
rights, labour and employment issues, as well as human rights. However, they are
distinct from formal, professionalized NGOs in a number of key aspects, which
include the issues they address, their organizational structures, their repertories
of action, and their lack of engagement with foreign donors.
Similar to the movements discussed by Kerstin
Jacobsen, Ionel
Sava and others recently in openMovements, civic
initiatives in Armenia represent a new wave of civic activism in the
post-Soviet period.
While at times there are ‘behind
the scenes’ links to professionalised NGOs, which Marlies
Glasius and I have examined in Armenia and elsewhere, and which we refer to
as ‘surreptitious symbiosis’, the activists involved in civic initiatives embrace
a more political understanding of civil society than that which introduced by western
donors in the 1990s, and they often distance themselves from NGOs.
Traditional NGO advocacy in
Armenia is structured, non-confrontational, technocratic and expert-based. Civic
initiatives utilize different repertories of action that rely on street-based
demonstrations, occupations as well as creative forms of direct action such as
flash mobs, concerts, theatrical performances, and art or photography
exhibitions. Moreover decision-making within civic initiatives is
consensus-based and horizontality is valued and encouraged.
Civic initiatives, therefore, are
not only rejecting the 'NGOization' of civil society, but they are also
introducing new understandings of civil society and practices of civic
activism. The individuals involved in civic initiatives describe their activism
as a form of ‘self-determined’ citizenship and place great emphasis on independence,
solidarity, and self-organisation.
They conceptualise citizenship to mean that
individuals have rights as well as responsibilities toward their communities
and their country and, as such, they encourage people to become the ‘owners’ of
their country and active subjects rather than passive and silent bystanders in
society, privately complaining about problems, but not taking any public
action to change things. But why have these groups emerged now and what is
their capacity to influence wider political processes?
Why are civic initiatives emerging now?
Many of those I interviewed in
Armenia explained the emergence and growth of civic initiatives as a new
‘awakening’ (zartonk) in societal consciousness, and argued that this
was due both to the coming of age of a new generation who did not directly
experience life under the Soviet regime, as well as the availability of new
information and communication technologies. Indeed the vast majority of
activists are people in their 20s and 30s, suggesting a marked generational
aspect.
However, while the introduction and spread of social media,
including Facebook and YouTube, as well as live-streaming technology has
allowed civic activists to access information more easily and to organise and
mobilise much more effectively and rapidly, we should be wary of exaggerating the
impact of social media, especially when there is evidence that social media has
also been a tool for government surveillance and even provocation (see The Net Delusion by Morozov). Furthermore, the
availability of social media may explain how activists are organizing; but it
does not explain why they are taking to the streets. Moreover, we should
analyse the rise of activism in Armenia within the wider context of recent
global protest movements.
Although Armenia is politically isolated and
there are very few links between Armenian civil society groups and wider
global
movements, activists do have access to information about global
developments, as
reflected by their use of slogans, practices, and discourses. For
example,
Occupy Mashtots Park, a civic initiative that in 2012 saved a public
park from
being demolished for the construction of luxury boutiques,
self-consciously
described itself as part of the global Occupy movement and incorporated
many of
Occupy’s repertoires of action. However, activists have been keen to
point out that the situation in Armenia is very different to that in
other countries. One activist said, "Neoliberalism in Armenia manifests
itself in a slightly different way than traditionally. The private
interest is also your oligarch interest which translates into political
power which translates into state power."
So, while recognising that neoliberal policies have global reach,
we should not forget that the
resistance to those policies is shaped by local histories and existing social
and political realities.In Armenia, as indeed elsewhere in the post-socialist
region, the socialist legacy and the politics of the post-socialist transition
continue to shape how people organise and mobilise.
This new wave of civic activism in Armenia is informed by the recent
wave of global protests, but is more directly driven by the anger caused by the
lack of action by local political parties and NGOs. Activists spoke angrily
about the growing impunity of oligarchs and the absence of rule of law, adding
that individual citizens have a right and responsibility to protest, and adding that people
should not expect ‘others’ to act for them. Of course individual responsibility
is a key feature of neoliberal rationality which stresses the
self-responsibility of individual subjects. However, in the context of civic
initiatives in Armenia, individual responsibility is not concerned with getting
people to maximize their economic self-interests, but rather with individuals exercising
responsibility through acting in solidarity with others for the greater common
good. Activists frequently say to people, "You are a citizen; you have a voice,
exercise it".
Beyond
activist circles, however, such understandings of citizenship and
responsibility are not widely shared. As one
prominent, young female activist from Yerevan who has been involved in a number
of environmental civic initiatives explained:
"People call me all the time and say they are cutting down trees or destroying such and such. I tell them, “Thanks for letting me know, but don’t just call me. You can address that problem yourself. Of course I will help you, but it is your yard, your community, your park and you must act for yourself as well.”"
One reason
for the lack of wider participation and activism is the prevailing ‘climate of fear’ in which people
are afraid they will lose their jobs and livelihoods. Another reason is the
lack of trust and belief in civil society as a force for change. NGOs have very
low levels of public trust in Armenia and in the post-Soviet region as a whole.
Thus many civic initiatives actively distance themselves from NGOs. For
example, one activist told me, "When people on the street approached us and
asked, “What NGO are you from?” We replied, “We are not from any NGO. We are
citizens of the Republic of Armenia.’’"
A pamphlet
printed by activists from the We Are Owners of the City civic initiative, which
was involved in the occupation at Mashtots Park, contained the following
message: “We are individual citizens…Our civic initiative is not a NGO and does
not receive any financial assistance".
This distancing makes strategic sense given the widely shared perception, actively fuelled by
the Government, that NGOs are ‘grant-eaters’ who singularly promote foreign
(i.e. western) agendas, as I’ve argued in my book Democracy Building and Civil Society in Post-Soviet
Armenia.
Can they influence wider political and policy
processes?
In recent years civic initiatives
have achieved small but
symbolically significant victories including preserving a waterfall (Save
Trchkan Waterfall 2011); halting the
demolition of a public park (Occupy Mashtots Park 2012); preventing transport fee hikes (the 100 Dram
civic initiative - August 2013) and temporarily halting the Government’s plans
for privatising pensions (the Dem Em
[I am Against] civic initiative 2014). More
recently there were very large demonstrations against the proposed electricity
rate rises organised by the No to Plunder civic initiative in May 2015.
While Armenia’s Public
Services Regulatory Commission is expected to rule on the proposal to raise the energy
tariffs in mid-June,
following mass protests, the Energy and Natural Resources Minister indicated that the regulatory
body would approve a
more modest price rise than
originally stated. Although these full or partial victories
have inspired participants and brought them greater public attention, civic
initiatives have thus far neither been able to significantly widen
participation beyond the capital nor, more importantly, led to structural
changes or had an impact on politically sensitive issues such as violence in
the Armenian army or mining.
Activists recognise that if they
are to achieve more structural and political-level changes, they will need to
widen participation, fight the reigning fear and apathy and encourage a greater
sense of agency among their fellow citizens. But it remains to be seen how
civic initiatives will develop and what form protest and activism will take in
the future. Can and will the Yerevan-based activists build links with
communities and individuals outside the capital to widen participation? Will they continue to remain
as autonomous, loosely organised, informal groups or will they begin to
‘scale-up’ their efforts by either institutionalising and becoming NGOs
themselves, albeit of a different, more radical kind, or by creating alliances with
political parties?
There are advantages and disadvantages
to each of these choices, but it remains to be seen how civic initiatives will
develop in the future and whether and how they can change politics in Armenia.
"Open Democracy" (www.opendemocracy.net), June 16, 2015
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