In 2013 ILGA-Europe supported 10 partner organisations in 8 countries within its project aimed at increasing the advocacy capacity of LGBTI human rights defenders and raising awareness of policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders about human rights of LGBTI people. The program was supported by the US State Department.
Within this program 10 small-scale projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine were implemented. Though each project had its own specific objective and was designed to answer particular needs of each organisation, all of them contributed to the overall goal of the project and made possible to move the work in each country on a new level. As a result of the projects implementation the organisations members were able to improve and optimise their internal structure and functioning through the series of internal capacity building trainings, develop organisational strategic plans, document the LGBTI human rights violations and produce relevant reports that are being used on the local and international level to advocate for the LGBTI human rights, improve and extend their skills on strategic litigation and work with the law enforcement bodies and other groups of professionals, to as well as to make discrimination against LGBT people more visible and accountable, to tackle intolerance towards this social group and general societal ignorance with regard to LGBT issues.
The project implemented by Lithuanian Gay League sought to achieve its goals through the combination of strategic litigation outcomes, capacity building strategies and corresponding advocacy and awareness-raising activities. The successful implementation of the project was crucial in consolidating the LGL’s capacity in assisting victims of hate crimes and hate motivated incidents in the future. As the implementation of some of the project activities were based on advocacy and awareness-raising dimensions within the organisation, these activities has contributed to increased LGL’s legitimacy in articulating the areas of concern and sensitising the relevant stakeholders on the national level with regards to the negative impacts of the phenomenon of hate crimes against the LGBT community.
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