Association for Human Rights and Active Citizenship PaRiter

Association PaRiter is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that promotes human rights, culture of non-violence, tolerance, minority rights and gender equality and women’s rights by linking non-formal education, research and activism. From 2018th, association became anti-discrimination point of Ombudsman in Croatia. Our goal is to educate, inform and raise awareness of the issue of human rights and women’s rights both at the local and national, regional and global level, through projects, workshops, civic action. Another purpose is to encourage citizens to become actively involved in “fight” for their and others human and citizens’ rights. Furthermore, we are working with youth through projects that promote non-violence and non-discrimination.

Since its beginning, PaRiter has implemented a number of successful projects. We have achieved great cooperation with other local and national NGOs as well as other institutions such as Omubdsman (we recently got a title of anti-discrimination point in the People's ombudsman network), Regional council for gender equality in Primorje Gorski Kotar county, Ombudsman for gender equality and a number of schools and educational institution.

In the field of empowering gender equality movement and women rights, and empowering women we have done different activities (trainings, inquiries, campaigns, advocacy, workshops, round tables, etc.). For example training “Croatian feminist spring” gathered young women to discuss topic of women human rights and a majority of them have joined our organization and now they are volunteering and implementing their own activities through the organization. We are active as well in empowering women, that is, as part of Month of women activism we have organized workshops for women of all ages from Primorje Gorski Kotar County. We also have gathered group of female activists who are ready to react on different actions which are endangering women human rights. PaRiter believes that it’s crucial to encourage local community to take an active role: for example we did this through campaign “10 days against collapsing of reproductive rights”. Besides we have web page “Hopa-cupa.org” (primary for young people to inform them of methods of contraception) and “Znajznanje.org” (page which promotes right of choice and gives exact information about abortion). We have also implemented project “Sisterality-International network of girls and young women” under programme Erasmus+, strategic partnership with partners from Italy and Austria, which aimed to raise awareness of sexism and discrimination and breaking of women working rights as well as empower young women for labour market. The campaign #znatelištosunamrekli (transnational, “Do you know what they’ve told us) served as an encouragement for women to star publicly speak about violations of their work rights and discrimination in the labour market. Radio shows and podcast Radioaktivna which aim to discuss topics of women working rights and in this year, on reproductive justice. We are planning to implement this year free legal advisory for women working rights. As partners, we are implementing project in the programme of Support of partnership development of civil society organizations and universities for implementation of socially engaged learning, supported by European Social Fund.

Through youth programme PaRiter is paying special attention to the upbringing, educating and informing the younger generations to become conscious of their roles and obligations in society which they live in. To achieve that we are organizing school workshops where we teach youth how to recognize discrimination, what means equal payment for equal work, who to contact if they feel they or someone close to them is discriminated, what are stereotypes and what means tolerance. In all our civic actions we include young people. Some of our successful projects is “Reci pa ispeci”, series of workshops for high school students which combines human rights workshops with video-activism, which which was presented at Erasmus+ national Tool fair. Faktor promjene (Factor of change) is also one of our projects that we are implementing, and is focused to young people to become active citizens and to promote non-violence through methods of human library and forum theatre. We have also organized numerous human libraries with Roma people, migrants or assailants, different races, LGBT representives, people of different nationalities and religious beliefs and other members of the community who are exposed to general misconceptions, stigma, stereotyping and or prejudice.

We have done different publications, for example ‘Factor of change’ about violence among youth and Comprehensive sexual education manual for teachers to implement health and sexual education - workshops in schools, inquiry ‘Reproductive rights and career’, inquiry ‘Comprehensive sexuality in Croatia’.

Our key staff is experienced in management as organization as project management. Also our personal have non-formal education methods skills and experience in trainings. Persons that are involved in our organization have been participated in many local, regional, national, international activities, also in youth exchanges and youth trainings (structured dialogue, project management, access to information, management of volunteers, theatre of oppressed, racism and discrimination, human rights, economic, social and cultural rights, women rights and gender equality, non-formal education, youth work, media etc). The persons who are working in our organization are responsible, have high competence skills and are experienced in different areas in work with youth and management of volunteers. Besides, staff had held different workshops on using web platforms and social media. Staff is also experienced working with minority groups through human library projects.