Youth Human Rights Group

Box 17
Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia
Russia, 185026
E-mail: [email protected] 
Contact Name: Maxim Efimov, Head of the Coordinative Council of the Karelian branch of YHRG

Youth Human Rights Group's Program

• Assistance in carrying out programs concerning protection of human rights and support of the human rights movement.

• Active support and realization of informational, educational and instructive projects for the youth

• Assistance in development of non-commercial human rights organizations and civil initiatives, mostly connected with the youth in Russia.

• Fight against xenophobia, extremism and militarism.

•  Development of open civil society and democracy.

YHRG's Activities

• Attracting of resources and conducting of information for operations.

• Collection, analysis, change and spreading of information; creation of mass media.

• Judicial, educational, scientific, research and cultural activities.

• Publishing

• Charity

• Holding lectures, exhibitions, lotteries, auctions, seminars, courses, sports and other events

• Consulting Services

Current Projects

    1.  "New Call-Up":  Protection of the constitutional right of citizens to change their military service to an alternative civil service.

The Constitution of the Russian Federation has assigned to the young people the right on the alternative civil service, but in practice the executive (military registration and enlistment offices) and judicial powers refuse exercising this right to conscripts according to different pretexts. We see our aim as supporting and rendering concrete help to citizens in asserting this right and as liquidation of legal ignorance of the youth in this area.

Our task is working out and informing conscripts about the legally arranged sequence of steps and rules of communication with the executive and judicial powers in order to obtain the positive result in asserting the right on the alternative civil service.

This project will be realized on the territory of the Republic of Karelia. To obtain the aim and to solve the tasks of the project we intend to organize the human rights center for conscripts in Petrozavodsk where the interviews, seminars, trainings will be held and free psychological and legal help will be rendered. To publicize the activity of the center, to make clear to people the situation with the alternative service in Karelia and in Russia, to consult judicially the center will issue the informational bulletin "New Call-Up".

The head of the project is Maxim Efimov, a student who was the first one to assert his right to alternative service. He has been working on this theme for 2 years already and has the experience of leading such a project. 

As executives of the project, volunteers will be attracted (most of them are students of Petrozavodsk institutions of higher education).  The result of our activity will be the concrete number of conscripts who turned to us for help and the concrete number of those who managed to assert their right on the alternative civil service with our help.

The estimated price of the project will not be more than $10,000.

    2.  "White Asters":  The aim of the project is revelation and prevention of cases where suffering is caused to people older than 65 as well as cases of cruel treatment of elderly people.

The task is ensuring the conditions when a person can (and wants) to let us know about his or her calamitous situation and rendering appropriate help.

We are eager to obtain it by creating a confidence service "White asters" where we will organize a special telephone service, will hold individual interviews and also will render free legal and psychological help. To obtain a fast reaction to situations we intend to create a group of volunteers which will involve the appropriate services-social security, medical, judicial help or even assistance of relatives.

Apart from that, we intend to issue a small newspaper "Conversation" to let elderly people express their thoughts and feelings.

The result will be perfectly concrete - the number of unprotected people whom we managed to help and to protect from further suffering caused by cruel acts of other people. The executives of the project are young people, students. The estimated price of the project is $10,000.

Last updated:    April 2001

A print version of much of the information contained in this NIS Third Sector Organizations section can be found in the The Post-Soviet Handbook (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1999).

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