Annual Report 2003

The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s activities strive to meet the new challenges arising from the sweeping changes in global economic, social and security policy. For example, the agenda on foreign and security policy is in a phase of profound transformation; this was further accelerated by 9/11 and the political turmoil due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The question of how the Heinrich Böll Foundation may contribute to crisis prevention, stabilization of civil-society structures, and the rule of law in crisis regions has become of increasing practical relevance for us. For example, the Foundation is already active in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. With these experiences, we hope to develop action-oriented concepts for processes of democratization and the establishment of civil societies; always with a particular emphasis on the perspectives and interests of women.

Another important aspect of our work is shaping policy for globalization processes. The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s goal is to cooperate with our partners in developing opportunities to design globalization in a manner characterized by social and ecological sustainability and gender justice. We bring relevant recommendations into multilateral trade and environmental negotiations. As an international foundation, we place particular emphasis in drawing attention to the analyses, perspectives and demands of emancipationist social forces from threshold and developing countries in the debate on shaping globalization. In the past year, the Foundation focused on a critical examination of the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Foundation, its international offices and its international partner associations critically monitored the WTO meeting in Cancún, Mexico. The Foundation provided up-to-date information on an English-Spanish Web site (www.cancun2003.org) and sponsored several forums in the fall, both at the conference site and in Germany.

With a total of 22 branch offices, the Foundation has now reached the limits of its presence abroad. With our substantive topics of emphasis – crisis prevention, European unification, democracy and human rights, socially and ecologically sustainable development, as well as gender and women’s policies – we are making concrete contributions to building up civil societies, promoting processes of democratization and enabling many actors to engage in political intervention.

Meanwhile, independent projects dominate our activities. However, this does not mean an end to cooperative projects, but rather the transition to “active cooperation” with NGOs, academic institutions, and publishers on the topics we have chosen for ourselves. In this, we function as a mediator between social movements, academia and institutional policy, as well as providing impulses for societal reforms. Our conferences, publications, cooperative efforts and alliances strive to achieve a political dialogue which goes beyond traditional political and societal camps.

In the next few years, we aim to expand our networking with other Green-affiliated foundations, Think Tanks and alliances. We will continue to place particular focus on strengthening civil-society structures and monitoring “Green” organizational approaches in Eastern Europe. In the middle term, we plan to increasingly transfer classic project activities to the crisis-ridden neighbor regions of the enlarged EU. This report highlights some of the aspects and details of our work in the past year; current information is always available on our Web site.

Berlin, April, 2004

Ralf Fücks      Barbara Unmüßig
Executive Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation