On 31 July 2020, an online meeting will be organised about the role of NGO platforms in combating discrimination for civil society organisations and Ombudsperson’s office in Azerbaijan. This meeting is the third in a series of online capacity building and networking sessions started in April 2020 for both civil society organisations and staff of the Ombudsperson’s office on discrimination topics.

Civil society organisations have an important role to play on combating discrimination. This includes prevention, awareness-raising and community building and mobilisation, support to the development of intercultural dialogue, assistance to victims of discrimination, advocacy for policy and legislative changes, etc. When civil society organisations form platform, their voice can become stronger, there can be more mutual solidarity within the anti-discrimination movement and this can also happen in the context of new initiatives by public institutions for adopting new legislation on discrimination.

In this online meeting, two examples of NGO platforms will be discussed, namely

• The Coalition of NGOs against Discrimination, Ukraine
• The Coalition for Equality, Georgia.

The meeting will offer inspiration to civil society organisations and the Ombudsperson’s office in Azerbaijan, in relation to their role and co-operation on the topic of combating discrimination. 

 Agenda of the meeting

This activity is implemented in the framework of the regional project “Strengthening access to justice through non-judicial redress mechanisms for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in Eastern Partnership countries”, financed by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance phase II.