BEROC initiated Open Dialogue on the most important issues of economic reforms in Belarus

The goal of the project is to start a dialogue on the most pressing problems of economic reforms. We chose four topics for the 2019-2020 project: Demography and Migration, Regional Development, and Support of the Development of the Private Business and Corporate Management.

We arrange events of the Open Dialogue in two formats: seminars for journalists with presentations by BEROC and other thinktanks experts; and round tables with journalists, experts, and representatives of the Belarusian government.

The first events of the project were organized in 2019. One of them was the seminar on Demography and Migration. Kateryna Bornukova, BEROC Academic Director, and Lev Lvovsky, BEROC Research Fellow, presented the results of their research to the journalists of the top Belarusian media.

One of the topics was the necessity of a reduction of paid maternity leave, which is one of the longest in the world. This topic triggered emotional discussion among the participants of the event and was widely covered in media. In the first three months of the project, there were dozens of media publications on the topics of the Open Dialogue.

We implement the Open Dialogue project with the financial support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (the Netherlands Fund for Regional Partnership – Matra) and Sweden.