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English Language Page The objectives of the project were: • Professional and institutionalized strengthening of the net of human rights organizations and coalitions by conducting joint actions with others nets of non-governmental organizations (feminists, ecologists, young people, trade unions, and others); • Assistance to increase the variety of forms and methods used in human rights work; • Development of skills for effective cooperation among non-government organizations with the press, with authorities, and with the public as a whole. In addition, development of skills for an raise of standards in regards to informing society about human rights and the human rights movement; • The creation of conditions that are essential for leading a successful public campaign and for influencing the human rights community in regions and the country as a whole; • An increase in the quality of individual legal aid provided by human rights organizations for the population by means of involving young lawyers in human rights work. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored this project. In order to fulfill the goals above, the following tasks were identified: 1. Creation of a network of local coalitions of non-government organizations from various civil sectors of society in order to protect social interests and to lead joint public campaigns. The need to create a network of coalitions was dictated by the need to lead a widespread public and informational campaign. This subsequently demanded a union of the resources of various non-governmental organizations. The Moscow Helsinki Group supported the work of the coalition of human rights organizations that had been united to work jointly on the most acute problems, and thus promoted the creation of the most effective mechanisms for protecting social interests in the regions of Russia. In the frames of the project, fifty coalitions operate in fifty cities and in twenty-six regions. Approximately 400 various human rights organizations participate in the coalitions. All of the organizational members of the coalitions prove to be considerable resources of support for their coalitions. They provide the coalition with accommodation suitable for work as an office and with material expenses. The staffs of the organizational members of the coalition work in the coalition for free. They also actively attract to this work other non-government organizations, sympathetic citizens, journalists, and students. Beyond the organizational aspects of the work, the coordinator of each coalition bears the responsibility set by the advice of the coalition. In order to achieve effective work from the network of regional coalitions, an observant council of the project was created in Moscow. Representatives of the Moscow Helsinki Group entered the following groups into this council: the young human rights movement, the all-Russian Association of Regional Human Rights Organizations, and other large networks of non-governmental organizations. The creations of the coalition in the frames of the project acted jointly with other regional and local partners, in the first instance with the support and coordination of associations of regional human rights organizations. Active interaction was accomplished with the network of Russian non-government organizations against racism, with the network of law students of the clinics, and others. The fundamental form of the activity of the coalitions is leading various actions in the frames of public campaign themes. Every coalition conducts on average about two campaigns every three months: a federal (public) campaign that unites the problems of all the coalitions and a local campaign, the theme of which is determined by the participants of the coalitions in dependence on specific situations in their region or city. In 2003 several all-Russian public information campaigns were conducted by the network of regional coalitions of the project jointly with the Youth Human Rights Movement. The campaigns included: “Tolerance,” “Gender Equality,” “Human Rights in Closed Establishments,” “Deputies on the Service to Society,” and “Electoral Rights of Citizens.” The first wide-ranging public-informational campaign of 2004 was “Availability of Education.” The fundamental goals of the campaign were: to attract the attention of the public and the authorities to the problems of the availability of education in regions of the Russian Federation; the education of citizens, especially the youth, about the laws on education and the duties of the state organs about guaranteeing it; exposure of the most typical problems of the availability of education in Russian regions and making recommendations for solving these problems; rendering essential particular help to individual educational establishments in regions of Russia as a demonstration of essential decision of problems of the availability to education; attraction of the maximum number of friendly organizations and ordinary citizens to active participation in the measures of the campaign. It is significant that in the frames of the public campaigns specially developed propaganda materials were used. These various posters, stickers, and leaflets were particularly effective in attracting the attention of the press and society to the campaigns. In all, the campaigns were built on such measures (how beautiful are street actions), round tables with the participation of representative authorities, discussions, etc. The coalitions also regularly organized press conferences and their activities receive coverage on local media. As was stated above, the civil coalitions lead not only public campaigns, but also informational actions and campaigns for solving local problems. The most popular themes of the local public and informational campaigns were: • Ecological Problems • Reforms of Housing • The War in Chechnya • Protection of Electoral Rights of Citizens • Protection of Social and Economic Rights of Citizens • Protection of the Rights of Invalids, Children, and of Some of the Other Vulnerable Groups In order to coordinate regional aspects of the project, the Moscow Helsinki Group organized seminars and òðåíèíãè, in which participants received knowledge and skills about how to conduct public and informational campaigns. They had already analyzed in detail previous campaigns and they studied the schemes of future measures. The participants also received the opportunity to exchange experiences of the organizational activity by the regional coalitions and experiences of cooperation within the network with friendly non-government organizations, with the authority structures, with journalists, and with others. 2. Creation of a network of local public receptions on the basis of remedial organizations by attracting students of law at colleges. The project planned to create 50 public receptions (legal clinics) for remedial organizations in 26 regions of the Russian Federation. These clinics were summoned, on the one hand, to discharge employees of remedial organizations, which expended practically all of their time on consultation of the population on various legal questions, and on the other hand, to serve with the resource of attracting young lawyers – future bureaucrats – to the remedial community. The leadership by probationers in the clinic was realized by a coordinator – in accordance with the demands of the project it was a lawyer with practical work experience in a public organization. After the first year, the work of the project with students in educational clinics was not only put in order again (the work was unified in all the clinics), but legal help was provided to 10,557 citizens, o which 352 people repeatedly turned to the reception for help. Most often, people turned to the legal clinic for assistance in protecting labor, social, housing, and family rights. There were treatments of illegal activity of official people, the lack of access to the administration of justice, and violence in the family. The clinics completed about 4,000 documents for their guests. The lawyers of the clinics, and the students who were studying the expert in the clinics, initiated more than 800 cases in court. Besides rendering legal help to the population, there was constant work being conducted to train student-probationers. They not only taught the students how to conduct and compose documents (claims, complaints, petitions, actions and other declarations), but they organized a visit to court sessions for them, as well as discussions, “round tables,” lectures, examinations of films on remedial subjects, and other activities. After the first year of the project, 787 students studied the expert in the clinics. They conducted a consultation in the clinics on average 2-3 times per week. Extra projects were conducted for the best students of the remedial school. For example: “International standards in the area of protecting human rights in the Russian Federation. The laws of children.” “Human Rights and Mechanisms for their Protection. A profound course.” 3. The development of public relation skills of local remedial organizations and the increase of their effective work on propaganda for human rights. In the frames of this problem, we conducted a seminar on public relations for colleagues of remedial organizations and representatives of mass informational resources. In the seminar, tracts were discussed about possible cooperation between non-government organizations and the media. The experts, both Russian and international, familiarized human rights activists with the skills of writing press-releases, with the regulations of the presentation of news, and others. They discussed the following problems at the seminar: the responsibility of human rights activists for accordance of unchecked information, the responsibility of journalists for the distortion of information, and also other problems of effective cooperation. Journalists and human rights activists recognized the success of the seminar. In the given moment, MHG conducts active consultation work in the area of developing a public relations strategy for regional remedial organizations. 4. Enlightened Work among non-government organizations In addition to the seminars, which were conducted for collaborators of legal clinics and participants of coalitions directly on the theme of the given project, the Moscow Helsinki Group found the opportunity to conduct a serious of seminars on various problems (monitoring human rights, organization of public campaigns, attracting young people to the human rights movement, lobbying interests for human rights and effective management of non-government organizations) for regional participants of the project. Back |
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