One of the main activities of our team is the involvement of national minorities in decision-making processes at the level of local communities in Ukraine. The main problem is that national minorities have circumscriptions in the local communities in Ukraine. But the Law lets them to get rid of these circumscriptions. We give them the help to do it. For example, in our day-to-day work we have good knowledge about discrimination of Crimean Tatars. In the end of 2007, Crimean Tatars’ public organizations appeal to OSCE High Commissioner on Human Rights Rolf Ekeus because of Ukrainian increasing discrimination policy toward Crimean Tatars. The application claims that “the tendency of non-acceptance or even rejection of Crimean Tatars’ rights has intensified among the authorities of Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea during the last few years. This Appeal proves that even leaders of Crimean Tatars’ NGOs have no knowledge how to decide the problems by own efforts by help of legislation and decentralization.

The target groups of the activities of the organization are national minorities’ associations, national minorities NGOs and the national minorities’ population of Ukraine. Millions of people of other nationalities live in Ukraine. Russians form the largest national minority — 17,3% of the population. Moldavians live in the southwest of Ukraine, mostly in rural areas and their number reaches 258,6 thousand people. Another large minority is Bilorussian — 275,8 thousand people. There are large numbers of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine; their number growing to 350 thousand but the process of their return to the motherland is not yet completed. From the ancient times Jews have lived in Ukraine. According to last census there are 100 thousand living mostly in cities. 151 thousand Romanians, about 205 thousand Bulgarians. Hungarians (163 thousand), 92 thousand Greeks. Ukrainian Constitution guarantees the development of ethnic, cultural, language and religious independence of both the native people and the national minorities. But the beneficiaries of the project are not only national minorities’ population but the Ukrainian society too, because by help of our activities we shall achieve good governance and peaceful coexistence of sundry national groups on the level of territorial communities.

The activity of the organization helps to implement human rights and freedoms of national minorities to take part in decision-making processes in Ukraine; will help to promote human rights of national minorities and consolidating their political participation and representation in the local (regional) authority bodies;  to prevent interethnic conflicts on local level (for example the case of Crimean Tatars); to create the national and regional frameworks for the protection of rights of minorities; to build the reliable participation of national minorities’ groups in the electoral processes.

            The main stakeholders of our activity are national minorities’ NGOs and national minorities’ activists. We help them to get the opportunity to enhance their possibilities in the sphere of influence to improve the life of population of national minorities’. They get the opportunity to become the real participants in decision-making processes on level of community (regional level too). Our target groups are national minorities’ population of Ukraine. They are not only beneficiaries but the participants of our activity too, because they use the results of the activity to be active and equal participants in the management of territorial communities. By the help of public lobby we also get the understanding of local authorities to collaborate, because only with the help of local inhabitants it is possible to develop the territorial communities most effectively.

We work with many minority communities but mostly with Crimean Tatars’ ones. The effective participation of Crimean Tatars in public life is an essential part of a peaceful and democratic society in Crimea and is therefore a recurrent theme in the work of our organization. For their proper integration into Ukrainian society, it is important that Crimean Tatars be involved in public decision-making - especially when it affects them directly - and that they feel they have a stake in society. The risk of inter-ethnic tensions occurring will be significantly reduced when everyone affected by decisions feels a sense of ownership in decision-making.

The right of persons belonging to national minorities to participate in public life has been included in all the major political and legal minority protection instruments of the 1990s such as: 

• the Concluding Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE of 1990 (Paragraph 35), 
• the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities of 1992 (Article 2, paragraphs 2 and 3), and 
• the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1995 (Article 15).

And naturally: The Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life; U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, A/61/L.67, 2007.

Analysts  of  ethnic  relations  in Ukraine  have  long  argued  about multiple  problems  that  the  excessive centralization of the Ukrainian state has created for minorities. Such a state of affairs is partly a legacy of the communist period with its bureaucratized and centralized public administration.  The state apparatus was a major obstacle on the way to public administration. The 'bottom-up-approach' is hardly having place among ethnic minorities in Ukraine. Here the central focus is on the initiatives taken by ethnic minorities and their organizations to stand up for their (political, social and cultural) interests irrespective of institutional structures, alone or in coalition with other actors. The basic concept here is mobilization. The bottom-up activation and mobilization make it possible to approach democratic norms for minorities to take part in decision-making processes.