News and Updates
The TEJP is delighted to be funded by the Council of Europe Roma and Traveller Unit for September-December 2024.
The TEJP has received funding from the Council of Europe, Roma and Travellers Division for September-December 2024 for activities under the 'Rights Aware,' project, which seeks to build capacity for Roma and Traveller Civil Society organisations to use Council of Europe standards and mechanisms for promoting rights of Roma and Travellers.
The proposed Rights Aware phase of the TEJP focuses on capacity-building and educational initiatives designed to meet the overall objective of fostering rights awareness and reporting of discrimination experienced by Roma and Travellers. The aim of this is to provide education, employment and training opportunities to Travellers, while seeking to embed all actions within the Traveller community, to build legal and rights-based capacity and knowledge.
These activities are supported by the Council of Europe, Roma and Traveller Unit for September-December 2024.
In embedding actions within the affected communities, TEJP Rights Aware recognises the need to build capacity and provide education and employment opportunities. This will empower Traveller and Roma victims of discrimination to understand their rights and how to action them within both the Irish context and the wider Council of Europe rights protection frameworks. This work responds to the vulnerabilities of Travellers and Roma as groups particularly affected by intolerance and discrimination which manifests as anti-Gypsyism.
All TEJP actions are guided by feedback and engagement from the Traveller Community and designed in full partnership with our Traveller Community partners. In particular, research data gathered under the last stage of the TEJP (2021-2023) revealed a need for Traveller-cultural appropriate and trauma-informed legal resources for Travellers. This proposal therefore also builds on this knowledge and collaboration to create effective and participatory actions.For the Rights Aware phase, TEJP will be partnering with Kerry Travellers and Travellers of North Cork.
In this context, the specific project objectives are as follows:
Objective 1: Enhanced awareness raising of European frameworks which protect the right to non-discrimination for Travellers will be addressed through the Rights Aware Seminar series set out in activity (i) above. In increasing awareness of Council of Europe rights frameworks as applicable to minority rights holders such as Travellers and Roma, a series of seminars along with accompanying information resources (posters, leaflets, videos) will be provided.
A seminar series will focus on the application of the relevant articles of the ECHR for Traveller rights (Article 3, Article 6, Article 8, Article 13, Article 14) exploring how the ECtHR in its judgments applied these rights. High-profile lawyers experienced with litigation before the ECtHR will discuss their cases and the ECtHR/ECHR as an avenue of redress for Traveller and other minority litigants. Proposed seminar titles include:
- ‘An overview of the Protections provided by the ECHR for Travellers’;
- ‘Litigating before the ECtHR - Marc Willers, KC’;
- ‘Impact of the ECHR for Traveller Rights across Europe – Marc Willers, KC.’
This action will not only build-capacity within Council of Europe frameworks but will also raise awareness of the application and scope of these for litigation defending Traveller rights in furtherance of Council of Europe strategic focus on increased domestic application of ECHR in Ireland and execution of judgments.
Objective 2: To create ‘reparative’ trauma-informed culturally-appropriate legal resources. The TEJP will develop and adopt culturally-appropriate and trauma-informed actions focused on responding to the unmet legal needs of Travellers, recognising harms caused by anti-Gypsyism and discrimination and responding to these through legal capacity building actions; the Traveller Court Supports Initiative and TravLaw Programme.
- (ii) Traveller Court Supports Initiative: will involve continued training of Traveller Court Support Initiative workers and rights awareness education of Traveller community advocates to allow for capacity building of the Traveller Community within the legal field, with further employment opportunities provided for Traveller peer-supports, working within their communities. This will build upon initial training completed in 2023 under a UNIC ER Seed Fund (see part 4 B above) and will focus on building familiarity with court processes through seminars, mock hearings, court visits and engagement with court staff and judges. This activity will run from July – October 2024 and will involve 5 members of the Traveller Community. At the completion of this phase the TCSI trainees will take up their role as Court Buddies providing support services to Traveller and Roma litigants with the potential to reach up to 50 litigants over the following 12 months (beyond the lifetime of this project phase).
- (iii) ‘TravLaw’ Education Programme will see the TEJP adopt a revised model in partnership with two Traveller groups (Kerry Traveller Health and Community Development Project, Travellers of North Cork) providing an 8-week introduction to law, human rights and Traveller minority rights. The TravLaw Programme will be provided on a pilot basis from Sept-December 2024. The short-course will be provided to 20 Traveller women drawn from Traveller Community groups and TEJP partners ‘Kerry Traveller Health and Community Development Project and Traveller of North Cork. It will be provided in a Traveller Community Centre in Charleville, North Cork for ease of access for the students. TravLaw will seek to build rights-awareness and community-led and rooted legal education initiatives. Development of the training will take place July/August 2024 and the training will run between September and November 2024. Learning and feedback from this initial pilot course will be used to develop a QQI Level 6 Accredited Course (to commence September 2025). Evaluation of the programme will be undertaken through participant surveys.
A final report on Rights Aware will be provided in December 2024 setting out activity outcomes, impact and findings