'Youth for promoting legality and human rights' - Study Session, Budapest, March 2013

Protection and promotion of human rights is a core point of European agenda, both on political and civil society field, and also when working with young people. While corruption, transparency and organized crime is usually considered as a sphere of state agencies and institutions, including law-enforcement bodies. And until recent time there was almost no way for active participation of civil society, and especially for youth organizations in this field.

Nevertheless, it is obvious, that on current stage of public development, when the “grey” economic is sometimes bigger than the ordinary one, and when transnational corporations are getting more and more power (both over workers and consumers) and the level of violation of rights and dignity by them increases; when organized crime becomes more globalized and when police and state agencies cannot be efficient in countering it, the role of citizens themselves becomes very significant in changing the situation.

Young people are traditionally one of first bounder of adjusting and examining new social formats that is why on their behaviour and on their attitude towards values of legality, transparency and human rights depends the future map of European societies.

In organization of this study session we will be bringing together 3 approaches: Council of Europe general framework of human rights and basic steps in EDC-HRE, YHRM experience in educating young people on human rights and advocacy methods, as well as on empowering them of further common actions, and - the FLARE recent developments and approaches to legality, anticorruption and transparency.

The whole field of anti-corruption, legality and human rights protection is really big, but we will try to concentrate on main close points of them – as corruption ruins the system of human rights protection and makes our life more difficult, as it harms the existing mechanisms of human rights protection. So, the narrative of this Study Session will be an attempt to unite these fields at least at one event where we can find a place to talk also about integration between discussion of Human Rights and the Rule of Law (two out of three main pillars of CoE life) with a special focus on the role of youth.

Working languages will be English and Russian.

Aims and objectives of the study session

The main of the activity is to support young people and youth organizations to take an active role in human rights and in actions for legality.
The session will have the following objectives:

• to explore the relations between human rights, legality, transparency and their practical application in public life at different levels;
• to reflect on the role and approaches of human rights education and youth work in defending human rights and fighting corruption;
• to support participants in development and realization of joint actions in the field;
• to share and explore the experience and good practices in field of human rights defense and fight with corruption

Who can apply?

All applicants should:

• be actively involved in human rights defense, fighting corruption/organized crime, promoting legality and rule of law
• have some experience in any of the related spheres: practical advocacy, journalism and new media, human rights education, research and analysis, work of state institutions etc
• be motivated in contributing to the study session and possible further activities initiated by participants
• have a very good command of English and/or Russian
• be between 18 – 30 years of age (motivated exceptions from this rule are possible)
• be available for the full duration of the study session

Preference will be given to the members of YHRM and FLARE, however not less than 20% of places will be available for people from outside the networks.

Conditions

All travel, board and lodging costs are covered by the Council of Europe in 100%. Participation fee of 50 EUR needs to be paid by each participant. This fee will be deducted from the travel reimbursement. Visa costs are covered except of health insurance costs.

All participants will be accommodated in the European Youth Centre Budapest in double rooms.

How to apply?

All people interested in applying need to fill out an on-line application form available at http://bit.ly/W7GKv4 

The deadline for applications is 15 January 2013.