PROJECT
Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
The project allowed the grantee to introduce and test a new methodology for involving youth in the sphere of international advocacy on behalf of the Roma population in Central and Southern Europe, while maintaining its already established role in strategic litigation. The project had an impact on the youth involved. Its longer-term impact is harder to assess, as is the case in most human rights projects. Impact is often the result of a combination of events and actions, legal changes and court judgments, along attitudinal shifts on the part of decision-makers, opinion-leaders, the mass media and the public-at-large.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
The grantee cooperated with several national human rights NGOs, and, through its partner, recruited local lawyers and local researchers from Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, and Romania with appropriate commitment and expertise. The use of recognised expertise was effective.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
While collaboration with local experts in regional human rights project was crucial for local and contextual knowledge relevant to Roma communities from Central and Southern Europe, the grantee needed to ensure continuous professional support to address the potential lack of experience with the application of international legal instruments and anti-discrimination legislation to take on such cases after the project closed.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
The grantee worked with individual youth trainees so that they could apply in practice what had been learned. This was an important innovation in terms of human rights training which often focus on short term training. However more personnel and resources were required to make this aspect of individual capacity development fully effective.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
The project focused on individual youth activists from Central and Southern Europe as the primary unit for capacity development, rather than focusing on Roma NGOs first, and youth working with them, secondly. Such an approach would have increased the probability of the organization retaining the benefits of the capacity development support provided.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
It proved difficult to combine litigation and advocacy in one Roma project. In principle, both are needed in Central and Southern Europe and are mutually supportive. In practice, the difficulty of predicting the timetable for, and duration of, the legal process, makes it hard to fit the litigation process into the parameters of a conventional human rights project.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country
LESSON
Lesson Learned: Empowerment of Roma to Fight Rights Deprivation
There was a lack of continuity and follow-up in some areas of project work, most notably anti-discrimination advocacy in Central and Southern Europe. This suggests that the project tried to include too many elements within a single human rights project with limited resources.
Project Name
Project Partner
European Roma Rights Centre
Project Description
The project sought to support and empower grassroots Roma organizations in six countries in Central and Southern Europe to advocate for laws, policies and practices to combat racial discrimination, and to promote the application of international human rights standards concerning housing in national legislation. Working with Roma youth activists to lobby policy makers the grantee hoped to strengthen working relationships. A separate project component aimed to raise awareness among the Roma population of using legal means to challenge rights abuses.
By focusing on the themes of anti-discrimination laws and housing and shelter rights, the project emphasized particular spheres where action was urgently required. Targeting Roma youth and young activists, the project sought to address in a practical way the weakness of Roma civil society organizations in undertaking advocacy on behalf of their own people. The litigation component finally was to demonstrate to the Roma people the viability of taking legal action as a means through which the state might be held accountable for its failure to uphold their rights.
Report
Evaluation Date
January 2011
Theme
Country