Russian LGBT Network

Coverage: Russia

Type: Umbrella organisation/association

Description:

The Russian LGBT Network is an interregional, non-governmental human rights organization that promotes equal rights and respect for human dignity, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. We unite and develop regional initiatives, advocacy groups (at both national and international levels), and provide social and legal services.

Aims and objectives: 

• To get the state to acknowledge and obey a set of basic rights and freedoms essential for the protection of the human dignity of LGBT people and further work on human rights in Russia.
• To enhance the visibility of the community, boost its potential, ensure its protection, and engage it in various forms of civic activity.
• To raise awareness of the dangers associated with homophobia and transphobia, and create an understanding that these are types of xenophobia and should not be socially accepted.

Main activities:

• Develop a direct dialogue with the authorities, political parties, human rights and civic activists
• Hold nationwide information campaigns
• Help unite and organize LGBT people in the regions of Russia
• Provide LGBT people with psychological and legal support, regardless of their place of residence and other discriminating factors
• Help the parents and friends of LGBT
• Conduct research on the socio-legal status of LGBT people in Russia
• Provide international organizations, which control Russia’s observance of its international human rights obligations (UN, the Council of Europe, OSCE), with alternative reports on the situation of LGBT people in the country.
• Hold roundtable discussions, seminars, conferences, training etc.
• Publish informational, educational and methodological materials
• Provide professional assistance with strategic legal cases
• Provide the LGBT community with distant informational, psychological and legal  support
• Hold nationwide training for leaders of the LGBT-movement