The Roma Women Fund Chirikli, together with the Union of Civil Society Organisations of National Minorities of Ukraine, is launching a new project aimed at strengthening the protection of the rights of Roma and other national minorities. The work will cover 9 regions of Ukraine.
The project has its own partners and its own geography, and complements the fund’s other strands of work — among them engaging civil society in Ukraine’s EU accession process.
Four strands of work
The first strand is building the capacity of civil society organisations and of representatives of public authorities and local self-government — that is, working with those on whom it depends whether a norm becomes practice.
The second is strengthening the participation of Roma and other national communities in decision-making. The third is developing mechanisms of monitoring, advocacy and human rights protection. The fourth is supporting the effective implementation of European Union and Council of Europe standards on the rights of national minorities.
Together these four strands close a full cycle: someone has to have the skills, someone has to be present at the table, someone has to measure the result, and all of it has to rest on recognised standards.
Who the support is for
The project will pay particular attention to four groups. Women leaders — because it is most often they who carry the daily work in communities, and it is their voice that least often reaches the level where decisions are made.
Young people — the generation that will determine whether the participation of national minorities in public life is the norm ten years from now. Human rights defenders — those who record violations and see cases through.
A separate group is communities affected by the war. For them the question of minority rights is compounded by displacement, loss of housing and broken ties with local institutions.
What it will look like in practice
Ahead are trainings, analytical studies, regional events and advocacy work. The combination is deliberate: training without data stays generic, data without advocacy never reaches decisions, and advocacy without a regional presence has no footing on the ground.
The fund has experience in each of these formats — from community-level research to expert work at the Ombudsman’s office.
European standards as the framework
EU and Council of Europe standards on the rights of national minorities are not an abstraction but a list of concrete requirements: from consultative mechanisms to protection against discrimination and access to services in one’s own language.
Ukraine has taken on those commitments. The question is how they work at the level of a specific community — and that is exactly what the project is meant to make visible.
What comes next
The project has just started; the fund will announce its first activities separately. The goal remains the one running through all of Chirikli’s work: a more inclusive society in which the rights of national minorities are guaranteed not by declarations but by mechanisms that function.
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