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The Ukrainian local NGO Zaporizhzhia Roma Center Lacho Drome carried out from February to July 2021 a project on trining for humn rights mediators in 4 cities of the Zaporizhzhia d Dnepropetrovsk regions of Ukraine, with the support of the EU Council of Europe project Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes in the Eastern Partnership.

What started as a small local project of basic human rights training for local mediators and an attempt to build bridges between representatives of local authorities and police and Roma people, emerged into a success story of empowerment and a working model that can be used in other small cities. The two target regions chosen for the project were characterised by a quite big Roma population with very low involvement in the civil society movement and little contacts with local authorities outside the big cities. These are Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia where the NGO Lacho Drome'' works. The main idea was to build and empower the network of Roma activists - mediators in smaller cities and equip them with instruments to build connections with local authorities and the police to make sure the latter hear what Roma communities in these cities need in cases of discrimination. Mediators were supposed to serve as a communication bridge between Roma communities in small cities and authorities.

This project was designed to address two big problems - Roma people are not communicating their human rights violations using formal channels and local authorities ignore the needs and constraints of Roma communities as they lack information and pressure.

The first stage of the project was to train Roma mediators in teams of two persons in each of the 4 cities - Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kamianske and Pologi. Local police, first of all patrol service and representatives of the Department of the Preventive Activities, were invited to the second stage, together with local representatives of the Ombudsman and the Department of Culture, Nationalities and Religion.

The second step was to build communication bridges between teams of mediators and local authorities, through sessions of joint discussion of the local issues and preparing action plans. Each city developed and formalised a list of tasks for further cooperation. These were short and specific local plans of feasible actions to be fulfilled during 6 months of the project implementation, to serve as a first attempt of formalising cooperation between the national minority and local authorities which was never so formal and close before. These small local plans have been a great tool of starting the communication between the communities and local authorities based on local needs and resources.

The third step of the project was awareness raising activities in local Roma communities and monitoring of human rights violations conducted by the mediators in their communities. These monitoring activities brought two important results. First, the awareness of the community members was increased and there is now a possibility for them to have a contact point to report human rights violations. This is the first step on the long path of empowering Roma communities to formally report human rights abuses to the authorities in the future. The second project result is the number and quality of cases collected, which show valuable data about the variety of discrimination attitudes Roma face in the regions and specific areas the mediators will work in the future after the project completion. 109 cases were collected in less than half a year in two regions of Ukraine and they show many different faces of discrimination Roma face daily - in education, in labour and on the streets. The project also has some success stories when mediators helped Roma people to formally complain to authorities in order to restore violated rights.

This project was organised with the support of the project Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in the Eastern Partnership, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in the framework of the Partnership for Good Governance Programme (PGG II).

See the article here:
Empowering the Roma communities to stand against discrimination in Ukraine - Council of Europe