Pilot protection program of internally displaced persons with disabilities – Kharkov

(February-May 2016 under the USA Agency on International Development support)

“Pilot protection program of internally displaced persons with disabilities – Kharkov” was realized on the base of Chernobyl History Workshop. This project was implemented by the organizations “Human Rights Fund” and KMNGO “Chernobyl Union” within the project “Uniting for the sake of reforms” of international program “Pact in Ukraine” under the USA Agency for international development (USAID) support. The goal of the program was to unite the people with disabilities for raising the level of rights protection of IDPs with disabilities, their self-organization for representing their interests in states structures and overcoming the isolation in the society. The project was implemented in Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk and Vinnitsa regions.

Several trainings, seminars and meetings were conducted within the pilot project. They were directed to the improvement of awareness and legal literacy of IDPs with disabilities. From 25th to 28th of February 2016 in Vinnitsa the unique school for leaders “Training for coaches” worked where the main speaker was Mr. Kalle Konkolla, a famous human rights defender, the chairman of the board of Abilis foundation for assistance the disable people, the director of non-governmental organization of disable people “The Threshold” in Finland. He shared his experience and also told a story about creation and formation of legal protection of people with disabilities in Finland. The main attention was paid to the discussion of the great difficulties the IDPs with disabilities faced with and also the ways of overcoming these difficulties using international experience with the assistance of the United Nations Organization Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities. The seminar-training “Active human rights defenders. The inclusion of displaced persons in local society” took place in Chernobyl History Workshop on the 11th -12th of March. One of the coach-consultants was Irina Yakovets, Doctor of Law. The participants of the event were introduced to main stages of interaction with power, methods of human rights protection of disabled persons. They also developed projects the realization of which would assist uniting of persons with disabilities for their rights protection.

The important item of the project was conducting the training “Remote work is an opportunity for everyone”, in which internally displaced persons with disabilities took an active part. Such questions as opportunities of search, specific character of remote work, peculiarities of writing a CV and many others were discussed during the training.

Several round tables, meetings with the leaders of non-governmental organizations concerned with the problems of internally displaced persons and people with disabilities and also with representatives of local authorities were conducted during the realization of the pilot program. All the meetings gave the opportunity to arrange a creation of general informational platform for exchange of information about the projects conducted by different organization for people with disabilities and IDPs.

The final event of the pilot program was a quest-action “Throughout the city, touching it” conducted in Kharkov on the 29th of April 2016 together with rehabilitation centre “Right of choice”. Everyone was proposed to take a challenge and test the availability of city space for blind people. The participants with a closed light-tight mask walked along the guided path, tested the convenience of streets, city transport, including underground with all its obstacles unnoticeable for the first sight. The goal of this action was to attract attention of the community to the problem of availability of Kharkov for disabled people.