The Warsaw Fellowship

2023 has been a crucial year for Poles. After 8 years democratic opposition parties regained the majority at the Parliament thanks to unprecedented voter’s participation. Poles supported opposition as they expect that former opposition parties will restore liberal democracy, in particular the rule of law and human and minority rights. There is also hope that Poland will become again a more committed EU member that would share its joint values and start fulfilling its obligations.

From this background, the 2024 Fellowship will be focused on the process of restoring liberal democracy and rule of law in Poland. We will explore:

– How the previously discriminated minority groups (women, LGBT+, persons with disabilities, migrants & refugees, Muslims) would regain their rights in theory and practice.

– How will Poland redefine its migration policy and how will it try to integrate newcomers to make sure that they feel part of the society?

– How to restore Polish civic society that over the last 8 years was the space for dialogue and resistance to violations of human rights and a driving force of many spectacular protests? How to maintain its changemaking qualities while it is almost completely deprived of the key resources?

The implementation of these changes will not be that simple since ca. 7 millions of Poles still supported the Law and Justice Party together with its coalition parties, so polarization of Polish society will continue. The challenge overall will be then to continue dialogue between various societal groups with the aim to gain more support for diversity.

Since the online sphere is growing in importance, the ever-wider use of AI-based tools which generate content, poses on the one hand a serious challenge to democracy due to its capacities to produce fake news, hate speech and therefore more polarization. Thus, to face these challenges, the civic society members need more advanced digital competences: knowledge and skills on how to apply adequate detection tools and how to respond more appropriately to mass production of hateful or fake content. It also requires some more resources to build the necessary capacity. On the other hand, AI also offers some opportunities to optimize some processes and reduce workload. Beyond these challenges and opportunities, the civic sector needs not only to keep up with the changes happening at the level of the whole society, but also to gain more knowledge and skills to be able to educate others how to intentionally use them. If you would like to be part of these changes, join us!

*We reserve the right to modify or cancel the program for reasons beyond our control.

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