The Leave No One Behind Project is moving ahead – Here is how!

On 7 February up to 40 participants joined a Civic Charter Webinar on rapid response mechanisms led by was Javier Roura Blanco, Communications and Reporting Officer at ProtectDefenders.EU. It focused on their tools and resources available to activists who work on the frontline of defending human rights.

ProtectDefenders.eu is the European Union Human Rights Defenders mechanism, and provides emergency assistance and support to activists in many ways: from advocacy and capacity-building to material support, including temporary relocation, tailored to the specific needs of each individual, community or organisation.

Vincent Koech, Kenyan Human Rights Activist Vincent Koech, said:

“Personally I have learnt something new on how to protect myself and how to seek help and the presentation by Javier was on point and easy to understand and I would like to participate in another similar webinar”.

Miriam Niehaus, Securing Civic Rights Manager, said:

“From the number of registrations and participants we received, we can tell that this topic really hit a nerve with our Civic Charter community.”

“While there are a lot of fantastic resources available for defenders at the frontline, many don’t know how to access that or that they are even eligible. We will endeavour to offer more such relevant webinars in the next weeks.”

You can find all information about upcoming events and webinars in our events section.

Thomas Howie

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Marion Lieser explains why the Centre plays an important convening role and what kind of work she would international civil society organisations engage on with the Centre

Thomas Howie

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

The ‘Leave No One Behind’ project is approaching the finishing line of its pilot phase. Five country teams have actively worked towards engaging their local communities as well as leading the dialogue with the governmental institutions. The local partners are currently preparing to collect data in the selected marginalised communities.

So what are the local partners up to?

• In Bangladesh, the project will map out the needs of migration-affected groups with regard to universal healthcare.
• The Indian partners will reach up to 1,200 households, monitoring the progress in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with 13 groups of vulnerable communities.
• Kenyan project partners will lead a five-county dialogue, collecting evidence on the needs of marginalised groups such as women and youth in remote regions, people with disabilities and elderly people.
• In Nepal, the project strives for gender equality and empowerment of women through collecting data on vulnerable groups of women and girls in 3 Nepali provinces
• Vietnam will gather both quantitative and qualitative data from marginalised groups such as ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, low-income women, elderly and youth in Ha Giang and Quang Tri provinces in order to promote social, economic and political inclusion for all.

How did the Leave No One Behind project all start?

The project itself was launched in September 2017 as a collaboration between 12 and local partners from five countries. Since then, we have worked together to empower marginalised communities whose needs are underrepresented or ignored in the national and international monitoring.

But we are not done yet! We are still planning to promote more evidence-driven approach and mainstream the inclusion of the vulnerable groups. After the project pilot phase, in February 2018, we aim to use this approach for up to 20 countries by 2022. We do not want to leave anyone behind and we strive for accountable decision-making and monitoring of SDG implementation for all groups in the society.

Are you with us?

If you are interested in getting involved with the project or have a question, please email Project Manager, Peter Koblowsky at pkoblowsky@icscentre.org.

Maria Kohutova

Leave No One Behind Intern

International Civil Society Centre