OSCE/ODIHR builds capacity of Ukrainian civil society to train human rights monitors

Thirteen human rights defenders from across Ukraine took part in a train-the-trainers workshop on human rights monitoring organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) from 3 to 7 July 2017 in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

“ODIHR attaches great importance to the role of human rights defenders in Ukraine,” said Marc van Gool, ODIHR Human Rights Adviser. “By building their human rights monitoring skills, we aim to strengthen the impact they can have on improving the human dimension of security in the country.”

The participants in the event – eight women and five men – learned how to effectively train human rights defenders to monitor human rights issues, based on a special curriculum developed by ODIHR. They were also trained on ways to include a gender-sensitive approach in organizing and delivering training.

“This training is tailored to the needs of Ukrainian human rights defenders and multiplies their capacities in human rights monitoring across the country,” said Valeriy Novikov, a participant from the Alternatyva Regional Human Rights Centre in Luhansk.

From 2015 to 2017, ODIHR trained nearly 100 representatives of Ukrainian human rights organizations in human rights monitoring, as part of its project on strengthening dialogue within civil society and with key governmental stakeholders in Ukraine. The project also included support for 12 human rights monitoring and dialogue projects and a human rights advocacy training event, the latter delivered at the request of the project and training beneficiaries.