On the week from the 6th to the 13th of April a representative of KISA attended in Strasbourg a study session – “(Re) Act for equal opportunities online and offline” – organized by UNITED for Intercultural Action and the Council of Europe. The study session was attended by youth activists representing 30 different organizations from member states of the Council of Europe, who tackle issues of Human Rights respectively in their countries.
The study session was conducted within the line of non-formal education and covered topics of any kind of discrimination, racism, hate-speech online and offline. During this week the participants had the chance to study various cases of the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), main definitions and concepts related to racism, discrimination and hate speech, cover the main issue of “Human Rights Education” from theory to practice, methods and techniques of campaigning online and offline as well as the opportunity to learn new online tools for campaigning and developing online activism.
Furthermore the participants had the opportunity to visit the Council of Europe were following a tour of the Palais de l’Europe, they were presented by working members of the Council with the main activities of “ECRI- European Commission of Racism and Intolerance”, the “Parliamentary Committee on Hate Speech” , the “Committee of Equality and non-discrimination”, the “Parliamentary no hate alliance”, the “European Youth Foundation” and the “Intercultural Cities Program” of the Council of Europe.
On the last two days the young activists through the new tools and manuals that they learned were divided in working-groups and started preparing new upcoming campaigns that will be developed during this current year. The campaigns concerned the “International Day against Homophobia-17th May”, the “International Refugee Day-20th June”, the “International day against Fascism and Antisemitism-9th November” and the “International Human Rights day”.
To conclude, the study session was also extremely informative concerning the different exchange of opinions and practices of each organization depending on the context of the country they are in, as well as the creation of future work-partnerships between them, through the expansion of their networks.
Avra Katerina Fiala
