November 16^th, 2018, Council for preventing and eliminating discrimination and ensuring equality (Equality Council) has launched “Equal Rights in Rural Communities” awareness campaign and organized a workshop in Varzaresti, as part of campaign’s activities, for 30 participants, such as teachers, educators, doctors, policemen, social workers, the city hall and the post office employees.

According to the Council’s data, it has been receiving annually 160 complaints and only 30% of complaints are received from the rural area. The main problem is not linked to the fact that discrimination doesn’t exist in the rural area, the main issue is that people are poorly informed about protection mechanisms against discrimination.

The Head of non-discrimination policies Rodica Jereghi noticed: “Participants learned how to address complaints to the Council and identified correctly the forms of discrimination based on protected criteria by the legislation. In the end, I observed that participants understood how to differentiate discrimination from any other breach”.

While participants watched the video “Protect your rights, don’t accept to be discriminated!”, which presented various methods of addressing a complaint as well as different stages of complaint analyzation.

Equality Council’s team distributed materials Guide for petitioners, adopted in 6 spoken languages, including Romani language; flyers for preventing discrimination in the employment process and workplace; booklets for raising awareness of tolerance, acknowledgement about diversity, and combating discriminatory deeds.

Council left free envelopes for local people from Varzaresti, which can be used by victims or witnesses of discrimination. Free envelopes can be found at the local postal office.

Equal Rights in Rural Communities awareness campaign is run from November 6^th to 30^th in the following regions Congaz (Gaguazia region), Tvardiţa (Taraclia region), Corlăteni (Raschani region), Sipoteni (Calarasi region), Slobozia Mare (Cahul region) and Vărzăreşti (Nisporeni region).

The primary goal is to inform society about its right to equality and about legal methods for protection against discrimination.

This campaign is launched by the Council for Preventing and Eliminating Discrimination and Ensuring Equality in partnership with the Institute Penal Reform with the support of the Program for the Financing of Human Rights Initiative / Change Projects. This program is carried out with the participation of the Institute for Penal Reform within the project “Strengthening the technical capacities of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights” financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by the United Nations Development Program.