Call for proposals – Review of the implementation of the Council of Europe Recommendation on LGBT Rights

25.01.2018

Deadline for applications: 5 February 2018, 18:00 CET/this call is closed.

ILGA-Europe is announcing a call for proposals to support the second round of review of the implementation of the Council of Europe Recommendation on LGBT Rights CM (2010)5. 

The recommendations, adopted in 2010, were first reviewed in 2013, and in 2018/19 a second round of the review will be organised by the Council of Europe.

The scope of the call is:

  • to contribute to the effective monitoring of the implementation of the Recommendation (2010)5 by member states
  • to increase the capacity of LGBTI organisations to carry out evidence-based advocacy in Europe, particularly in relation to the implementation of the Recommendation (2010)5.

Under this call for proposals, grants will be made to organisations working at national level either on their own or in partnership to carry out two key activities:

i. Documentation of the extent to which the Recommendation’s measures remain to be implemented in individual member states – to take place in the first half of 2018. The documentation will be based on a questionnaire that the Council of Europe will send to member states and a methodology developed on the basis of this approach; the timetable is determined to feed into the official review process of the Council of Europe.

ii. Advocacy aimed at ensuring that member states engage meaningful in the review and throughout the process consult with civil society organisations, also around next steps on how to fill implementation gaps thus identified

The proposed grant should help organisations to dialogue with their governments on the assessment of the current state of implementation of the Recommendation, as well as ensure that grantees will provide country reports based on their documentation to the Council of Europe, while ILGA-Europe will provide a summary of the overall position.

The timeframe of this grant is very tight, as member states will receive the questionnaire to Review the Recommendation only in early February and will have until end of June to answer to the Council of Europe. This is the window of opportunity for national level organisations to engage with their governments to ensure they are engaging in this process, answer the questionnaire and to ensure that they do so in a meaningful way. The review process offers an opportunity to work with your governments, asking for a meeting to assess implementation together and engage them in a process of identifying next steps that can be taken to improve implementation.

The grants seek to ensure the review process can add value to your national level advocacy work. In this sense, a key gap in implementation (for example trans rights or recognition of same-sex couples and Rainbow families) could be identified and made the focus of your engagement in the review process.

ILGA Europe will provide grantees with the documentation methodology, based on the official questionnaire the Council of Europe will send to member states. [1] ILGA-Europe will also provide ongoing advocacy advice and support, particularly in relation to dialogue with national authorities.

Grants under this Call for Proposals “Implementing the Council of Europe Recommendation on LGBT Rights” are funded by the Dutch Government.

Target countries, grants available and eligible organisations

Up to 7 grants will be awarded within this call, with not more than one per country.

All qualifying applications from Council of Europe member states will be considered.[2]  It will be important for applicants to demonstrate clearly the relevance of the project to the needs of the LGBTI community and the added value for the national advocacy work on the protection of LGBTI rights.

Grants will be for sums of up to €5,000.

Applicants should be LGBTI organisations, or LGBTI groups within a larger organisation. They should be officially registered with local authorities, or, in countries where there are no registered LGBT NGOs, unregistered initiative groups.

Expertise

Where possible in such a short time frame, applicants are encouraged to consider cooperating with other organisations within the LGBTI community in the framework of this grant.

While one organisation will be the lead grantee, cooperation and alliances with other partners will considered an asset. This may be particularly important in the case of expertise in relation to transgender and intersex issues, which applicants will be required to demonstrate.

It will be acceptable and encouraged for applicants to form a partnership with an academic or research institution, but a LGBTI organisation needs to be leading the project.

Conditions

Successful applicants will be required to accept the following conditions:

• The documentation methodology outlined in the attached Guidelines must be followed precisely, in order to permit comparability with evidence from other countries.

• The report must be delivered to ILGA-Europe by 1 July 2018, in order to ensure it can feed into the drafting process of the Council of Europe’s review report. This deadline will also allow for a report review, as well as the preparation of a European level summary report by ILGA-Europe, in time for submission to the Council of Europe (November 2018).

• The report must be prepared in English and where relevant also in the national language.

This call is closed

[1] The questionnaire is currently being finalised and can thus not be shared yet.

[2] Applications in respect of Belarus and Kosovo are not eligible under this Call, as these countries are not Council of Europe member states.