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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Rome:20261016T170000
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SUMMARY:PUBLIC MEETING: Organisational resilience of civil society under external pressure
DESCRIPTION:Bank accounts\, archives\, management platforms\, communication channels\, insurance and payments: intermediaries that are often irreplaceable and themselves exposed to unpredictable political pressure. How can operational continuity be ensured in a system built around a few chokepoints\, and what policy response could secure European financial and digital sovereignty? \n\nWhen: Friday 16 October 2026 – 5 pm to 8 pm\nWhere: EMERGENCY Venezia – Giudecca 212\, Fondamenta San Giacomo\nFree entry\, registration required: Register at tinyurl.com/NGOResilience\nProgram\n\n  \nProgramme\n17.00 Welcome Rossella Miccio\, President\, EMERGENCY\nOpening remarks Giovanni Pelizzato\, President of the Municipalità di Venezia-Murano-Burano\nIntroduction Tara O’Grady\, President\, No Peace Without Justice\n17.20 Panel discussion\nStefano Quintarelli\, Computer scientist (online)\nZoe Paris\, Advocacy Director\, Coalition for the International Criminal Court\nFausto Gianelli\, Lawyer for Autistici/Inventati\nRoberta Borroni\, Vice-President\, EMERGENCY\nAhmed Abofoul\, Legal Advisor\, Al-Haq\nLuca Casarini\, Head of Mission\, Mediterranea Saving Humans\nMatt Cannock\, Centre for International Justice\, Amnesty International\nAlvise Nicoletti\, Founder and CEO\, ELAN42\n18.30 Open discussion Moderated by Niccolò Figà-Talamanca\, Secretary-General\, No Peace Without Justice\n19.50 Conclusions Alison Smith\, Convenor\, Coalition for the International Criminal Court\n20.00 Close \nBackground\nAn almost invisible infrastructure\nEvery organisation\, small or large\, rests on an ordinary and almost invisible infrastructure: the bank account\nthat receives its grants and pays its salaries\, the archives and management platforms that hold its documents\,\ncontracts and institutional memory\, its email and messaging\, its insurance\, its payments. These services are in\nthe hands of a few intermediaries\, often irreplaceable in the short term and themselves exposed to\nunpredictable political pressure. The resulting architecture has grown around a few nodes without anyone\ndesigning it that way: each dependency is a critical point with no alternative\, and the dependencies add up.\nWhen a node gives way\, the organisation stops\, even if it was never itself targeted.\nFrom the International Criminal Court to an ordinary bank transfer\nAt the most visible extreme are the sanctions imposed\, under the same executive order\, on judges and\nprosecutors of the International Criminal Court and on three Palestinian human rights organisations that\ncooperate with it\, Al-Haq\, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: measures contrary to Italian\nand European law\, which nonetheless take effect in Europe\, because banks\, payment networks and digital\nservices depend on nodes located elsewhere.\nAt the end of August the same tool was turned on a small Italian volunteer collective\, which had offered free\nemail and websites to associations and activists since 2001: the United States government placed it on a\ncounter-terrorism list. A few days later its bank\, an Italian ethical bank\, suspended its account rather than put\nat risk the cards and international payments of all its customers. In early September the collective shut down\nall its services.\nAt the other extreme there is no list\, only over-compliance: a compliance system that goes well beyond\nanything the law requires. An organisation pays a staff member in a country automatically classified as “high\nrisk”: almost every time\, even for recurring payments\, the machine flags the transfer\, the payment (and\nsometimes the account itself) is suspended\, and the bank’s compliance office has to phone to ask for the donor\ncontract\, the invoice or the payslip\, and then release it manually. If this happens three times a week\, the bank\ncloses the account on a simple cost-benefit calculation\, knowing full well that everything is in order. An\norganisation afraid of losing its account starts choosing projects\, partners and words with the bank in mind:\nthat is how self-censorship and blackmail take hold.\nOrganisational policies and policy responses\nOn 16 October we will discuss this on two levels. The first concerns organisations: which governance choices\,\nredundancies and contingency plans ensure operational continuity\, without solutions so rigid that they push\nstaff towards informal workarounds that create new risks. The second concerns policy: what responses could\nsecure European financial and digital sovereignty\, starting with an update of the Blocking Statute\, the\ninstrument through which the European Union shields those operating on its territory from the extraterritorial\neffects of third-country measures.\nFormat\nThe meeting is public and open to everyone. It takes the form of a working session: short framing remarks and\nplenty of room for the practical experience of those who run organisations and those who carry out their day\nto-day work. Civil society organisations of every size\, local and national\, and experts in the field are invited to\njoin the discussion. Contributions are welcome in Italian or English\, with live subtitles in both languages.
URL:https://www.npwj.org/event/public-meeting-organisational-resilience-of-civil-society-under-external-pressure/
LOCATION:EMERGENCY Venezia\, Giudecca 212\, Fondamenta San Giacomo\, Venezia
CATEGORIES:Meetings
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