November 12^th, 2018, Council for preventing and eliminating discrimination and ensuring equality (Equality Council) has launched “Equal Rights in Rural Communities” awareness campaign.

The Equality Council’s team hold an information session for 40 persons, such as teachers, educators, doctors, policemen, social workers, the city hall and the post office employees in the Corlăteni helmet, Raschani region.

During this session participants discussed with Council’s representatives about the issued decision, which stated discrimination. In the end, participants took part in the exercise, where they analyzed complaints applied to the Council in order to recognize discrimination characteristics. The majority of participants successfully solved cases with discrimination, but some of them were able to recognize the different forms of it.

As well, participants received materials for preventing discrimination in the employment process and workplace; booklets for raising awareness of tolerance, acknowledgement about diversity, and combating discriminatory deeds. At the same time, Guide for petitioners, adopted in 6 spoken languages, was distributed to participants to help them in addressing complaints to the Equality Council.

Recently, the Equality Council has created a video “Protect your rights, don’t accept to be discriminated” has been shown to all the participants and has presented to the participants during the session.

The Head of non-discrimination policies Rodica Jereghi mentioned: “The main goal of the campaign Equal Rights in Rural Communities is to communicate with rural people about Council’s activity and its competences. We are a young public authority, and as consequence, many people hardly know about us. However, we face difficulties and injustices in our daily life, consequently, people declare that they are discriminated without understanding the real meaning of this concept. That’s why we aim to present general terms about discrimination and to help people to distinguish discrimination abuses from other breaches. It will definitely direct them to the right institution for support”.

For the first time,  Council left 30 free envelopes at the postal office for locals of Corlateni to address complaints that contain discrimination cases.

People, who have access to the Internet, can apply an online-complaint on the Council’s Website www.egalitate.md. 

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.