On 15 September, Council for preventing and eliminating discrimination and ensuring equality in cooperation with the Parlament of the Republic of Moldova organized a workshop on the subject “Equality is the essence of democracy”. This event was organized within the framework of the International Democracy Day. This day the Parlament had opened its doors for anyone wishing to know about its activity and other public institutions subordinated to it. At least 50 persons took part in that event, some of them were parents, headmasters and youngsters.

The Council’s President Yan Feldman and the Head of Administrative Body Olga Bulmaga told about different forms of discrimination and gave real examples of cases from the Council’s practice, especially examples of discrimination in the educational system. At the same, the Council has presented its statistics of investigated cases.

The Council’s President emphasized that according to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights all human beings were born free and equal in dignity and rights but we all were born in different social conditions, families, environment and other circumstances which had influenced on the social distance between us. To confirm that point the Council’s staff conducted an exercise where 9 volunteers drew from the Equality Bowl a role and answered on 9 questions of Yan Feldman. Answers might have shown the real situation of the participant’s life according to the role. For every affirmative answer participants made a step forward in case of negative one to stay put. For example, the question ‘‘How often do you travel?’’ just 3 participants from 9 made a step forward. At the end of the exercise, participants created a pyramid where on the top of it there was an owner of an import-export company, a son of the chairman of the ruling party and a daughter of an ambassador. On the bottom, there were placed persons with disabilities, HIV positive, older, the seniors, immigrants and etc.

This experiment showed that social classes, discrimination, social distance and intolerance have strongly existed in our society.

In the second part of the day, the Council distributed more than 800 materials, leaflets, brochures, guides to show the Council’s activity and its authority for preventing discrimination and ensuring equality. Participants were asked to apply complaints in case if they became victims or witnesses of discrimination.

Recap, that at the beginning of 2017 the Council has developed a program for 2017-2019 for strengthening the cooperation with the Parlament of the Republic of Moldova. In this regard two workshops were organised, one with Yan Feldman and another one with the member of the Council, Andrei Brighidin.