Women’s bodies have regularly been – and still are – the central target of conservative and fundamentalist ideology and praxis. Although the individual right to self-determination has always been shaped by social and cultural norms and legal frameworks, it is currently being determined more than ever by reproductive technologies and medical issues.

Annual Report 2014  provides information about activities of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung worldwide. It explores issues of (gender) democracy, human rights, European policies, social and environmental transformation, art, culture etc.

The International Literature Festival Berlin, together with the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, has called on authors to contemplate the fates of refugees and asylum-seekers in literary form. Twenty-two authors from fifteen different countries answered this call in poems, short prose and essays. The perspectives and insights are just as different as individual motives, destinies, and experiences.

Women’s bodies have regularly been – and still are – the central target of conservative and fundamentalist ideology and praxis. This essay provides analytical background information for critical and controversial debates and motivation to explore political intervention.

The concept of "gender backlash" encompasses activities pursued by a multitude of different local initiatives all over Central and Eastern Europe, which strongly promote tradition over equality. In many cases these groups appear to be backed and inspired both by influential US-American “pro life” organisations as well as the Kremlin’s "Gay-rope" propaganda, which aims to discredit the European Union as a place of moral decline.

We are honoured to present conference materials of the Second International Gender Workshop "Overcoming Gender Backlash: Experiences of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Poland" organized and hosted by the Kyiv office in October 2013. In this publication you shall find analyses focused on gender education, LGBT issues, as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights of women in the respective countries.

Market economies are demanding systems that require transparency, competition to limit monopoly powers, effective price mechanisms, owner liability and a balance between profit and risk. If these checks and balances get out of kilter then the system spins out of control and this is exactly what happened.

The publication was elaborated within the framework of the Regional Program “Gender Democracy/ Women’s Politics”. It contains contributions presented at the regional conference “Gender in the EU. The Future of Gender Policies in the European Union” which took place in Warsaw on 28 October, 2009.

In post-war periods and in the aftermath of serious, systematic human rights violations, gender-based forms of violence are usually forgotten during the processing of the past and reconciliation phase. Yet, only when they are paid due regard can lasting peace processes be established. Given this, it is important to subject transitional justice institu-tions and approaches to a detailed review. The results: until now, transitional justice has, in many places, failed to address the gender dimensions but increasingly so the issues of inequality, hierarchies and violence patterns. This study details these problems and presents the resulting challenges facing politicians and society.

Though the publication of this study the Green European Foundation is continuing its work on the elaboration and dissemination of ideas and research on one of the core projects of the European Green political family: “the Green New Deal”. Initiated by the Heinrich Böll Foundation Warsaw office and the Zielony Instytut Poland, this volume endeavours to link the European level concept to a concrete national example. A “Green New Deal for Poland” delivers a first case study of what the actual implementation of a European Green New Deal would mean at the national level.

The publication of the European Green Foundation attempts to find answers for the question about the future of Green politics in Poland. The publication stems from the research ordered in 2008 by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and coordinated by Przemysław Sadura. The research concerned the prevailing reception of Green ideas and perception of Green political powers by the Polish society. On its bases, the Author analysed the Greens’ chances of finding a permanent place on the Polish political scene.

What does Beijing Platform for Action mean for women today? Which elements of its language, which goals of the documents became part of the women’s movement at local, national, and global levels of activism? Does it mean that the Platform for Action, agreed upon in 1995, and considered the most revolutionary international manifesto of the support for women’s rights is now outdated? Has the document that initiated the presence of the women’s organizations within the international public space has the special value only for the first generations of women’s NGOs but is meaningless for the younger women? The Heinrich Boell Foundation commissioned a study that indicates what is the influence and perception of the Beijing Platform for Action in Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

The twentieth anniversary of the 1989 breakthrough is an occasion for summaries. The year 2009 was full of intense debates about achievements and failures, successes and lost opportunities of the past two decades. In the countries of the former Eastern Bloc those debates were a sort of closure on history. In the context of broadly publicised disputes about hierarchy of events and symbols (the Polish Round Table vs. the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the lists of those deserving most honours (whether and why Wałęsa or Gorbachev ought to be included), both the role and significance of women in the events of 1989, and their experiences during the twenty years of transformation constituted a marginal topic in the anniversary discourse.

Looking at the changes initiated in 1989, such as the introduction of market economy and the adoption of neoliberal ideology as the foundation of the new political, economic and social system, it is important to see how they influenced the situation of men and women. The publication Gender Issues 2009: Gender Equality Discourse in Times of Transformation, 1989-2009: the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine is yet another initiative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation regional Office in Warsaw trying to fill this gap and, at the same time, it is also the result of the Foundation’s cooperation with partner organisations from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine, which, since 2007, have been monitoring the progress of the implementation of gender equality politics and adherence to EU standards in this field.