Enabling environment for human rights dialogue in North West Russia

Purpose

The Danish Insitute for Human Rights (DIHR) has been working in Russia since 2009. Our engagement started with partnerships in North West Russia and Southern Urals on small-scale projects relating to the provision of legal aid, support to prisoners, police reform, human rights education of police and penitentiary. The institute has also been capacity building the civil society organizations, established cooperation between the state and civil society, developed mediation procedures, workedwith transparency of the judiciary through court journalists and supported victims of racial crimes as well as implementing the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) standards into Russian practice.

From 2014, DIHR and the Russian NGO partner to work towards enabling dialogue processes between state authorities and civil society, and increased public participation in Arkhangelsk, Kaliningrad, Mari El and Perm. Besides civil society organisations, the project involved Public Councils, regional Ombudsmen and Public Monitoring Commissions. The adoption of new law on “agents of international influence” challenged DIHR involvement in Russia, mostly because main state partners had to pull back from the project. DIHR continued its engagement, working together with civil society actors, identifying opportunities to navigate in the new challenged context. Our work ended in 2016, and it remains to be seen whether new opportunities to work in Russia will present themselves.

The difference we made

DIHR has strengthened the capacity of our civil society partners to become professional educators in the area of human rights, more specifically Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Our partner organisations are now offering the courses on human rights related issues for state officials and authorities.

289 staff of Federal Penitentiary Service and Ministry of Interior in three regions - Karelia, Arkhangelsk, Kaliningrad, participated in the seminars on human rights concept and values, standards, mechanisms of human rights protection, cases and decisions of ECHR, human rights protection standards in the penitentiary and police. Our partners continue working with these structures following up on the education programmes, and lobbying for new ones.

DIHR and our partners produced a number of manuals on several human rights issues, among all a manual on Access to Information, a publication on legal framework for right to participation, and a manual on public participation and the role of National Human Rights Institutions. The publications are being disseminated within civil society and other stakeholders.

DIHR has supported the partners in developing a methodology for a pilot baseline study on the right to health in Kaliningrad, Mari-El and Archangelsk. The results of the study identified main challenges when it comes to health provision, set from rights based perspective. After publication of the results, a national baseline study was conducted in Russia, and the conclusions were in line with the ones from our pilot study. The Ministry of Health has proclaimed its commitment to address the challenges identified.

Partners

• NGO “Man and Law” (Yoshkar-Ola)
• NGO “Right to Know” (St. Petersburg)
• NGO “Rassvet” (Arkhangelsk)
• NGO “YULA” (Kaliningrad)
• NGO “Perm Regional Human Rights Centre” (Perm)