The Lacho Drome Roma Center in Ukraine is implementing until July 2021 a local project aiming at supporting Roma communities to fight human rights violations in Ukraine, with the support of the European Union/Council of Europe joint programme Partnership for Good Governance, and its regional project “Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes in the Eastern Partnership”.
Lacho Drome Roma Center will engage in building local network of mediators in 4 towns in 2 Ukrainian regions (Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk). The project goal is to train 8 Roma rights mediators in 4 settlements to equip them with human rights knowledge, mediation, and counselling skills so they collect data on human rights violations and advise Rome people how to solve them. Project also aims to set up a channel of local communications between mediators with local representatives of public authorities and the Ombudsman legal representatives to ensure timely reporting of human rights abuses and their prompt investigation. During project implementation, mediators will collect and report information about Roma rights violations, empower local community members helping them to understand their human rights and build connections with local authorities reporting all violations and monitoring its investigation.
This project is one of the five civil society projects supported by the European Union/Council of Europe regional anti-discrimination project, in Armenia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine aimed at combating discrimination, favouring inclusion of groups at risk of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes, and raising awareness among vulnerable communities and the general public about redress to discrimination.
This activity is implemented in the framework of the regional project “Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in the Eastern Partnership”, financed by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance phase II.
