EU COVID-19 Solidarity Programme For Eastern Partnership

As part of the EU COVID-19 Solidarity Programme for Eastern Partnership, Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC) joint forces with People in Need (PIN), and AFEW International (AFEW) to propose set of interventions in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and contribute towards longer term socio-economic resilience of vulnerable groups.

To achieve this overall goal, the consortium recognises the critical role local CSOs play in service delivery, community mobilization, awareness raising, policy engagement and advocacy for the protection of human rights and civic freedoms during and in the post-pandemic environment. The action will support these key actors in the target countries to achieve the goals of the action via a set of interrelated activities that both aim to address the short to medium-term needs and longer-term institutional barriers of implementation of international standards on Covid-19. Within the scope of the action, NHC focuses on:

• Prisoners and ex-prisoners and entities and organisations involved in counselling and rehabilitating them
• People in mental health institutions and their relatives and their organisations, and mental health professionals (for the program related to this target group the NHC will cooperate with the Global Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP),

Our Aim

NHC, in cooperation with GIP, seeks to ensure continued and enhanced monitoring and advisory work on Covid-19 measures in closed institutions (both in the penitentiary and in the mental sector) as well as assessment and provision of the immediate needs of people confined in these institutions (phase 1). For this purposes, NHC provides sub-grants to CSOs to monitor implementation of Covid-19 measures in and provide equipment (PPE and IT) for the closed institutions.

CSOs also play a critical role in this process yet lack the core skills that can ensure they effectively engage in policy advocacy and development. To this end, NHC and GIP also provide capacity development opportunities to CSOs and watchdog initiatives for advocacy and policy development in connection to longer-term pandemic resilience of people in the closed institutions (phase 2). In addition, collaboration between all grant recipients in target countries is encouraged to enhance respective advocacy and policy engagement initiatives.

Milestones in the mitigation of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the strengthening of resilience of vulnerable groups

Call for Proposals EU COVID-19 Solidarity Programme for the Eastern Partnership:

• Call for Proposals on Covid-19 in Prisons and Mental Health Institutions
• Call for Proposals to Supply Equipment to Counter Effects of the COVID-19 in Closed Institutions

Project evaluation reports:

• Results of open call “Monitoring the effect of COVID-19 in Prisons and Mental Health Institutions”
• Final results of Call for Proposals “Supply Equipment to Counter Effects of the COVID-19 in Closed Institutions”

Project publications:

• Report 1: COVID-19 in closed institutions: National findings and implications moving forward
• Report 2: Taking lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic forward within closed institutions: Illustrative advocacy tools

Project Implementation

Funder: European Union

Partners: AFEW International, People in Need (PIN)

Project period: July 2020- December 2022

Budget: €4 Million total/ NHC- € 948,301