Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic

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About the programme

 

Transition policy is a policy of promoting human rights and democracy that takes advantage of Czech specific experience with the process of social transformation, democracy building, and non-violent resistance to the totalitarian regime that preceded democratisation of the country. 

The Czech Republic, along with other Central and Eastern European countries, made this experience in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, the transformation policy is based on the principles and values shared by the Euro-Atlantic community to which the Czech Republic belongs. These principles and values have universal validity. The transformation policy is a modern, systematic approach, based on the proven close connection and conditionality of the state of democracy and human rights. 

The priority themes defined by the Concept for the Promotion of Human Rights and Transition are: 

  1. support for international human rights mechanisms and systematic consideration of human rights (the so-called mainstreaming);   
  2. support for civil society, including human rights defenders;   
  3. promoting freedom of expression and access to information, including media freedom,   
  4. promotion of equal and widest possible political and public participation;   
  5. support for institution-building under the rule of law;   
  6. promoting equality and non-discrimination;   
  7. promotion of human rights in employment and environment-related issues; 

The Czech Republic can benefit from its transformation experience especially in relation to countries that are culturally, geographically, historically or otherwise close to it. It therefore focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on cooperation with partners in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. The choice of current territorial priorities always reflects the cross-cutting priorities and emphases of the Czech foreign policy. 

The Programme has the following priority countries:  

  • Armenia 
  • Burma/Myanmar 
  • Belarus 
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina 
  • Georgia 
  • Kosovo 
  • Cuba 
  • Moldova 
  • Serbia 
  • Ukraine 
  • Vietnam 

Beyond the projects in priority countries, other one-off activities may be implemented under the Transition Promotion Programme. For example, in response to the Arab Spring in 2011, a special call for transformation promotion projects was launched for North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia). A call for proposals is regularly launched to co-finance projects of successful applicants for funding from major international donors, in particular from the EU external assistance instruments, regardless of the country of implementation. Smaller local transformation projects are also implemented through Czech embassies around the world. 

Within the framework of the Transformation Promotion Programme, the Human Rights and Transformation Policy Department cooperates with a number of partners from the non-governmental sector (in Czech). 

An overview of current grant calls can be found here

attachments

Human Rights ann Transition Promotion Policy Concept 200 kB pdf (Adobe Acrobat document) Jan 12, 2017

Local transition projects

Local Transition Projects (LTP) are projects to promote human rights and democracy implemented by local NGOs in cooperation with the Czech embassy all around the world. more ►

Project cycle, logo

Below we summarise the main points of project implementation, including visibility requirements. more ►

Logo of the Program

logo_transition

Logo of the Transition Promotion Program for download. more ►

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