Draft:Convivenza Foundation

The Convivenza Foundation was founded by Johann Bucher, former Swiss Ambassador, and Daniel Thürer, Professor emeritus of the Institute of International, Comparative Constitutional and European Law at the University of Zurich, in 2007. Johann Bucher was the Foundation's first President, and Daniel Thürer its first Vice-President and today's Honorary President. The following Presidents were Ambassador Anton Thalmann, former Deputy State Secretary of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Raoul Blindenbacher, the current President, who was elected in 2018. Romedi Arquint, one of the founding members of Convivenza and Former President of the Federal Union of European Nationalities and the Lia Rumantscha, is the actual Vice-President. To date, the Foundation Board is composed of renowned personalities from academia, civil service, international organizations, and politics.

The office management was originally based at the Europe Institute at the University of Zurich and is currently held by Hans-Ruedi Hübscher, a former civil servant at the Swiss Federal Office of Justice. From early on the Foundation was counseled by a scientific advisory board, composed of prominent international scholars. The board was dissolved when a new more practice-oriented strategy of the foundation was introduced in 2021. The founding capital of Convivenza was provided by the Canton of Grison, the Canton of Zürich, and the Max Schmidheiny-Foundation. The activities of the Convivenza Foundation are subsidized by unrestricted financial contributions from the private and public sectors.

Content and Method

The Convivenza Foundation's roots go back to its founder's particular understanding that the priority of "protecting minorities", which implies that they are weak and helpless, must shift towards "managing diversity", an approach that perceives human beings as responsible, independent, and self-confident citizens (Thürer/Kezdia 2009). The Foundation did not just want to be an observer of contemporary political and societal phenomena that registers, classifies, describes, and analyzes. Instead, it turned its ambition towards becoming an active player that, together with the concerned stakeholders, develops and implements new and innovative models to organise minority and diversity issues (Thürer/Blindenbacher 2018).

To strengthen its impact the Convivenza Foundation adopted a new method of operandi in 2021, which enhances the creation and transformation of political solutions into practice. It is built on the Governmental Learning Spiral, a theory-based methodology developed and applied at the World Bank and the OECD. The method was adjusted for the Foundation and is described in a custom-made Manual, which offers detailed instructions on how to design political innovation and learning events. It consists of a three-phase template, where selected actors review in a participative multistakeholder process a given state-of-the-art knowledge related to a political problem situation (framing phase), derive concrete measures (reflection phase), and plan how to apply them into practice (projection phase). Subsequently, the developed measures are implemented, evaluated, monitored, and if required, readjusted in a new spiral spin. (Blindenbacher 2021)

Activities and Publications

Based on its method of the Governmental Learning Spiral the Convivenza Foundation organizes conferences, roundtables, and seminars about minority and diversity issues in Europe. It does this in close collaboration with its partners such as research institutes like EURAC Research Bozen/Bolzano, universities like the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law of the University of Zurich, private organisations like the Lia Romantscha as well as public organisations, such as the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The topics dealt with are for example:

-        Managing linguistic and ethnic diversity

-        Human rights, minorities, and diversity management

-        Peoples in Europe without a kin-state

-        Strengthening capacities of the police service in multi-ethnic societies

-        Representation and cultural autonomy

-        Minority protection versus managing diversity

-        International protection of human rights and protection of national minorities

-        Protection of minorities and conflict resolution

Most of the results of these events are published in the Foundations' book series, which is printed by Schulthess Print in Zürich and financed by the Directorate of International Law of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. To date, six volumes have been published in the Convivenza Book Series. They can be downloaded from the Foundations' website and include:

• Volume 1: Managing Diversity - Protection of Minorities in International Law. Daniel Thürer and Zdzislaw Kedzia (Eds.) 2009.
• Volume 2: Models of Autonomy? Case Studies of Minority Regimes in Hungary and French Polynesia. Thomas Burri (Ed.) 2010.
• Volume 3: International Protection of Minorities - Challenges in Practice and Doctrine. Daniel Thürer (Ed.) 2014.
• Volume 4: Repräsentativität und kulturelle Autonomie. Daniel Thürer und Romedi Arquint (Hrsg.) 2014.
• Volume 5: Embracing Differences - A Commitment for Minorities and Managing Diversity. Daniel Thürer and Raoul Blindenbacher (Eds.) 2018.
• Volume 6: Innovation and Learning to Manage Diversity in Governance. Raoul Blindenbacher (Ed.) 2023.

Literature

•  Thürer, Daniel and Kedzia, Zdzislaw (Eds.): Managing Diversity - Protection of Minorities in International Law. Convivenza Book Series Volume 1., Schulthess Print, Zürich 2009.

•  Blindenbacher, Raoul and Nashat, Bidjan: The Black Box of Governmental Learning. The Learning Spiral - A Concept to Organize Learning in Governments. (World Bank Press) Washington DC 2010.

•  Thürer, Daniel and Blindenbacher, Raoul: Embracing Differences - A Commitment for Minorities and Managing Diversity. Jubilee Edition of the Convivenza Book Series Volume 5. Schulthess Print, Zürich 2018.

•  Blindenbacher, Raoul: The Governmental Learning Spiral – A Method Designed for the Convivenza Foundation's Operations to Improve Learning about Minority and Diversity Issues. Manual, June 2021.

External links

• www.convivenza.ch