EHRA has received technical support to activities complimentary to the EECA multicountry project “Sustainability of services for key populations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia”, implemented by the International Charitable Foundation «Alliance for Public Health», financed by the Global Fund, where EHRA is contracted as sub-sub recipient by sub-recipient Charitable Organization «All-Ukrainian network of people living with HIV/AIDS» (CO «100% Life»). Technical support is provided to support activities within 2 objectives:
Objective 1 “Improve the financial sustainability and allocative efficiency of HIV programmes”;
Objective 2 “To alleviate the most important human rights and gender barriers for access to HIV prevention and care service”.
- Conduct an assessment of the sustainability of the programmatic aspects of OST services within the transition in selected countries: Belarus, Moldova and Tajikistan.
- Ensure preparation and facilitation of a regional workshop for activists and professionals on how to document human rights violations and on mechanism in place to support such violations for South Eastern European countries, covered by the Global Fund multicountry project: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.
- Submit cases on human rights violations among people who use drugs to UN human rights treaty bodies.
- The assessment of sustainability of the programmatic aspects of OST services has been finalized by national consultants from Belarus and Tajikistan. The updates and edits to the methodology per recommendations from national consultants have been made by the international consultant responsible for the development of the methodology.
- Due to COVID-19 crisis, flight and public events ban and EU borders closure starting from March 10, the regional workshop for South East Europe countries on documenting cases of human rights violations, initially planned to be conducted in Belgrade, Serbia on March 17-18, was postponed till later date in 2020.
- EHRA jointly with Kazakhstan Union of People Living with HIV submitted the Report of Civil Society Organisations on Discrimination and Violence against Women who use Drugs, Women Living with HIV, Sex Workers and women in prison in Kazakhstan to 74th session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the session took plane in Geneva, Switzerland, from October 21 to November 8, 2019.
- The report on Ukraine to CESCR was submitted by EHRA, Charitable Fund “Ukrainian Network of People who Use Drugs” VOLNA and Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network on January 24, 2020. EHRA representative together with representative of VOLNA took part in the CESCR 67 session on Feb 17-21, 2020 in Geneva where Ukraine was discussed. In March 2020 CESCR published concluding observations on the results of the session, where the Committee recommended Ukraine Government to consider decriminalizing drug possession for personal consumption.
Countries covered by project: Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine.
Project timeline: November 2019 – September 1, 2020
Overall budget: 40 365 USD
Project donor: UNAIDS Technical Support Mechanism (TSM)