The Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Tajikistan yesterday hosted the 10th edition of the EU-Tajikistan Civil Society Seminar where the representatives of the government, civil society organizations (CSOs), media, and diplomatic community have participated.

The EU Delegation notes that the Civil Society Seminar is a platform that aims to involve the civil society into the dialogue process on human rights and democracy related matters.  These seminars are organized regularly by the European Union back-to-back with the European Union Human Rights Dialogues with partner countries.  It offers a great opportunity to have an exchange of best practices and lessons learnt among civil society organizations, to discuss their role in development process and to tackle the exiting issues on various subjects.

This year, the Civil Society Seminar reportedly focused on enhancement of cooperation between the civil society organizations and the state institutions in Tajikistan.  It provides an opportunity for dialogue on how to improve the collaboration between the civil society organizations and the public sector.

Particularly, the discussions focused on how the CSOs could help the Government in the implementation of its tasks, including enhancing human rights, how the Government could help the CSOs in their activities, the challenges for the CSOs and the ways how to solve the existing and potential issues.

The event featured presentations from both the CSOs and the government representatives on various aspects of cooperation.

At the end of the seminar, a set of recommendations were developed by the participants on the improvement of cooperation between the CSOs and the state institutions that will feed the further dialogue on this subject.