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How Diaspora Communities Influence Politics at Home: Moldova Foundation’s experience

By Vlad Spânu*

In 1906, in Washington, DC, the American Jewish Committee has been established in response to a series of pogroms in czarist Russia, particularly the 1903 Chisinau pogrom. Chisinau (Russian transcript Kishinev) was a capital of Russia’s south-western Gubernia (county) Bessarabia, acquired by Russia in 1812 as a result of the Bucharest treaty that ended the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812. Russians obtained half of the territory of the Principality of Moldova that was under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Turkey.

We needed almost 100 years to realize that an advocacy group to support democratic transformation, human rights in what was Bessarabia, now the Republic of Moldova, is necessary.

In fact, the Moldova Foundation is the first non-governmental organization focused exclusively on advocacy matters for Moldova not only in U.S., but also elsewhere. Why are we so behind of others?

If on ethnicity, are they Romanians or Moldovans? Do they speak Romanian or Moldovan? Some say they are Romanians. Others - Moldovans that speak Moldovan due to political convenience, ignorance, believes implanted by 150 years of Russian, then Soviet propaganda and Russification, deportations, organized famine, collectivization and other crimes of the Communist regime.

As result, citizens of the Republic of Moldova who emigrate abroad in mass (official and unofficial statistics suggest from half million to one million or 25 % of the country‘s population) hardly form Moldovan communities. Ethnic Romanians are likely to become part of the Romanian communities formed by emigrants from Romania. Ethnic Ukrainians - to Ukrainian communities formed by emigrants from Ukraine, etc.

According to the World Bank's Migration and Remittances Factbook for 2008, 36.2 percent of Moldova's GDP in 2007 came from money sent home by the Moldovan emigrants. The country tops the rankings together with Tajikistan, showing how tied the relations of those who left the country are with their families who stay in Moldova. It is a huge potential that is underestimated so far and not fully used.

In the last years, the Moldovan government has adopted several decisions, organized events aimed at encouraging the establishment of the Moldova diaspora. The government is mostly motivated by its own political agenda. In recent years, the official Chisinau has adopted a series of policies, called by experts “the Moldovenism”, aimed at building the Moldovan nation, a theory of the czarist Russia and the Soviet Union. The Moldovan authorities went as far in 2007 as calling the people in Romania, residing in the counties of the historical Principality of Moldova, its western part, as the Moldovan minority, which is absurd for those who have elementary knowledge of the history of Romania and Moldova and of the linguistic issues. 

On this background, the Moldova Foundation was created in 2003. I was the founder, a Moldovan citizen, a former diplomat who left the foreign service in 2001, when the communist party won the elections promising to unite Moldova with Russia and Belarus, reinstall the Russian as the state language, revisit the privatization programs, etc. I was joined in my effort by several classmates from Harvard who decided to stay connected after graduation through a project, which was the project I proposed - the Moldova Foundation. Later on, other high profile individuals interested in Moldova joined the Board of Directors.

If I was behind of the Jewish Community in Washington by 100 years, I was behind by 10 years of the U.S.-Baltic Foundation and U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, the footsteps of which I followed. Like these two organizations, the Moldova Foundation is not a Diaspora group, but an advocacy organization, formed by mostly non-Moldovans (from the United States, Australia, Israel, Germany, even Nigeria).

Our main goal is to support civil society in Moldova to enjoy freedoms that we enjoy here, in the Western world, as well as to get free from the Russian military occupation of Eastern region of Moldova, called Transnistria, that borders Ukraine. We want Moldova to be a full member of NATO and EU as did the three former Soviet Republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - that share the same fate with Moldova:  Russian occupation in 1940 as a result of the Soviet-Nazi pact known as Ribbentrop-Molotov.

It is not an easy task, especially these days when Moldova is ruled by the Communist Party, which, through democratic elections in 2001 took control of the presidency, parliament, government. According to the Freedom House’s Nations in Transit, in 2008, comparing with 2001, all indexes, including electoral process, civil society, independent media and judiciary, has been worsening (except corruption, which is constant, meaning bad). Persecution and harassment of the opposition parties is common. Independent media outlets are closed through privatization schemes or non-issuing licenses. Therefore, there is a lot of work to be done by the international organizations, donor-countries, which provide technical assistance and support.

Thus, the Moldova Foundation has focused on advocacy in the West, not on programs in Moldova. Our main financial supporter is the Open Society Institute that understood our goals and objectives from the very beginning. We have organized public events, mostly in Washington, but also in Brussels and recently in Romania and Moldova. We have created the Friends of Moldova informal group that includes former U.S. ambassadors to Moldova, people from the think tank community and universities in Washington that are interested in Moldova-related issues. At the meetings we hold 4-5 times a year, the group identifies obstacles for Moldova to move forward and provides policy recommendations.

The first problem we tackled was the Transnistrian conflict and Russia’s military presence in Moldova – these are two interrelated issues. Several experts from the Republic of Moldova and from abroad and I elaborated the 3-D Strategy (Decriminalization, Demilitarization and Democratization) for the resolution of this conflict, changing the goal from “status first” (of the Transnistrian region) to “prepare the ground first” for elaborating the status of the region. The strategy was promoted in Moldova in September-October 2004 (to all political actors and a consensus among the government, opposition and NGOs was reached), Washington (end of 2004) and Brussels (beginning of 2005). The principles of the 3-D strategy were embraced by Moldova, United States, EU (and its members), and Ukraine. Then Russia followed the suit, accepted a new negotiation format – 5+2: Russia, Moldova, Transnistrian secessionist administration, Ukraine, OSCE and the two observers, U.S. and EU. This resulted in two Moldovan laws adopted in 2005 that change the premises on how the conflict is resolved; monitoring of the Ukraine-Moldova border by the EU to prevent smuggling of goods and weapons; launching programs design to engage the civil society groups in the Transnistrian region. In addition, in 2006, the Friends of Moldova group elaborated recommendations for policy makers in two non-papers focused on the democratization of the Transnistrian region and on changing the existing military format that is stationed in the security zone in Moldova into a new multinational peacekeeping force that would secure the peace in that region.

Besides, the foundation has organized events that familiarized the Washington establishment with the results of elections in Moldova (in 2005 – parliamentary elections – and in 2007 – local elections) and their implications for the regional security, among other events focused on democratic reforms and obstacles Moldova feces.

* Presentation by Vlad Spânu, President of the Moldova Foundation at a Society for International Development's event Distant Cousins: How Diaspora Communities Influence Politics at Home on June 27, 2008; Time: 12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.; Venue: Johns Hopkins University, Rome Building Auditorium; 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC. 

Moldova Foundation