The Cidi project “Capacity building of civil society to take part in policy dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina” is a two year project, financed by the EU. It is being implemented by a consortium consisting of Kronauer Consulting (BiH), COWI (Denmark), ATOS Consulting (UK) and the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs (Croatia). The project is providing technical assistance designed to facilitate the development of policy dialogue between government and civil society organisations.

On 30 March 2010, the Cidi project held its first educational seminar for representatives of government institutions from the state, entity and Brcko District governments. The seminar was entitled Policy dialogue in practice – challenges and opportunities and took place in Sarajevo.

This was the first in a series of seminars which the Cidi project will organise over the next 18 months. During this seminar, representatives of government institutions had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge about the issues which are currently affecting policy dialogue in BiH, and the challenges and opportunities for engaging civil society organisations in policy dialogue. In addition, participants learned about current examples of good practice in BiH, relating to cooperation between government institutions and civil society and successful policy dialogue.

A total of 39 representatives from different levels of government attended the seminar.