Ukraine: local NGO to protect Roma communities with EU support

A new EU-funded project, supporting Roma communities to fight human rights violations, has begun in Ukraine. It will be implemented from February to July 2021 by the Lacho Drome Roma Centre in Ukraine.

The project aims to train eight Roma rights mediators in four settlements to equip them with human rights knowledge, mediation, and skills to collect data on human rights violations and to advise Roma people how to solve them. To this end, the NGO will engage in building a local network of mediators in four towns in two Ukrainian regions (Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk).

The project will also interconnect mediators with the local representatives of public authorities and the Ombudsman to ensure timely reporting of human rights abuses and their prompt investigation.

This project is one of the five civil society projects supported by a 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.

The 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’, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe as part of the Partnership for Good Governance.

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Press release