The European Union and the Council of Europe are implementing the project “Promotion of Human Rights and Protection of Minorities in South East Europe” with the aim of improving access to the rights of national minorities at various governmental levels.  The implementation of the project is based on the Council of Europe’s standards in the field of minority rights, notably the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The project activities refer to:

1) Providing support to the local self-governments to encourage measures and capacities to implement in practice the minority rights recommendations in the selected municipalities in the region.

2) Identifying and sharing the best practices among municipalities and developing adjustable models that can be used by other municipalities in the region.

3) Based on the evidence from the local level, together with the Council of Europe’s monitoring recommendations, providing support to the legislative and policy changes at the central governmental level.

The selected municipalities will be assisted to develop the solutions for removing the obstacles in the implementation of minority rights at the local level with the support of financial assistance and with technical support of the Council of Europe’s international and local experts.  Thirty- six municipalities will be selected in an open procedure based on the pre- defined criteria in the areas of education, the media, official use of the languages ​​and alphabets, culture, non-discrimination, effective participation of the persons belonging to national minorities in the cultural and economic life, as well as and in the field of public affairs.

On behalf of the project’s Coordination Committee, the project’s Secretariat publishes:

Call for Expressing Interest

The call is open for all multi-ethnic municipalities in the Southeastern Europe, including the Republic of Serbia.

The funds of the Council of Europe for the municipalities are limited to 18, 000.00 euros per municipality. The selected municipalities will contribute 10% to the overall budget of the project, which won’t exceed 20,000.00 euros. A municipality may contribute to the project financially or through various forms of support (human resources, administration costs, travel expenses, etc).   

The deadline for submitting the applications is September 15, 2014 (24:00 hours). The applications are to be mailed to jpmin@coe.int.

The applications will be evaluated by the local committees for evaluation of applications on the basis of the published criteria. The selected municipalities will, if necessary, get help with preparation of their projects.  

The funds will be awarded in the first half of December 2014.

More details on the procedure of assigning the funds and on the criteria may be found in the criteria for selection of municipalities, the instructions for application and registration form.  The said documents are available at http://pjp-eu.coe.int/web/minority-rights

Call for a Consultant for the Issues of Human Rights and Protection of Minorities

The Council of Europe issued a call for the selection of a qualified person that will provide assistance to the selected municipalities with grant applications and project implementation.

The application deadline is September 15, 2014. More on the requirements of the competition is available at: http://hub.coe.int/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=91832f7c-487b-49bd-a5eb-abd1ecb3c347&groupId=10227#E7y2e8l9cF3Q%29