Call for Proposals: Individual Measure for Human Rights and Democracy (Uzbekistan)

Deadline: 12-Aug-22

The European Commission (EC) has announced a call for proposals to promote and protect:

• human rights and fundamental freedoms;
• democracy; and
• the rule of law.

The action will achieve this by supporting and strengthening civil society organisations (CSOs), democracy activists and human-rights defenders working on critical human rights and democracy.

Objectives

The specific objective(s) of this call for proposals are:

• Protecting and empowering of the civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights;
• To strengthen capacities of CSOs and independent media to exercise fundamental freedoms to protect and support journalists, bloggers and other media workers;
• Safeguarding fundamental freedoms, including harnessing the opportunities and addressing the challenges of new technologies: to create and maintain an environment conducive to the full exercise of all fundamental freedoms, online and offline.

Priorities

The priority(ies) of this call for proposals are:

• strengthening capacities of civil society, women and youth organisations in fighting against discrimination in all its forms and especially violence against women, and contributing to policy dialogue on gender equality and women’s rights and enabling the active participation and inclusive growth and decision-making through women empowerment.
• strengthening capacities of civil society organisations to exercise fundamental freedoms, to promote and protect freedom of opinion and expression by ensuring transparency and accountability, as well as strengthening media and digital skills and countering hate speech in the media.
• promotion of representation, participation and active engagement of youth in decisions-making and reform processes
• promoting inclusion and respect of fundamental rights of members of vulnerable groups (refugees, minorities, persons with disabilities)
• supporting freedom of expression, freedom of the media, unrestricted access to information and fight against disinformation, with respect to new and digital technologies
• promoting awareness of human rights protection issues, encouraging a positive human rights discourse in the digital environment and countering negative trends (hate-speech, stigma, disinformation);
• protection of and support for human-rights defenders;

Funding Information

• The overall indicative amount made available under this call for proposals is EUR 800,000.00 from the budget 2021 and EUR 890,000.00 from the budget 2022, subject to the adoption of the financing decision for year 2022. Additional supplementary funding of EUR 400,000.00 is available from the 2022 NDICI-Global Europe cushion and can fund activities. The contracting authority reserves the right not to award all available funds. Similarly, this amount could be increased should more funds become available.
• Size of grants
• Any grant requested under this call for proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:
  • minimum amount: EUR 300,000.00
  • maximum amount: EUR 400,000.00

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead applicant(s): In order to be eligible for a grant, the lead applicant must:
  • be a legal person or an entity without legal personality or a natural person and
  • be non-profit-making and
  • be a non-governmental civil society organisation (international intergovernmental organisations are ineligible and
  • be established in a Member State of the European Union or any territory as no nationality restriction applies to applicants and, if any, to co-applicants, and affiliated entities, and
  • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the coapplicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary.
• Co-applicant(s)
  • Co-applicants participate in designing and implementing the action, and the costs they incur are eligible in the same way as those incurred by the lead applicant.
  • Co-applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria as applicable to the lead applicant himself.
  • Co-applicants must sign the mandate form.
• Affiliated entities
  • The lead applicant and its co-applicant(s) may act with affiliated entity(ies).
  • Only the following entities may be considered as affiliated entities to the lead applicant and/or to coapplicant(s):
    • Only entities having a structural link with the applicants (i.e. the lead applicant or a co-applicant), in particular a legal or capital link.
    • This structural link encompasses mainly two notions:
      • Control, as defined in Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings:
        • Entities affiliated to an applicant may hence be:
          • Entities directly or indirectly controlled by the applicant (daughter companies or first-tier subsidiaries). They may also be entities controlled by an entity controlled by the applicant (granddaughter companies or second-tier subsidiaries) and the same applies to further tiers of control;
          • Entities directly or indirectly controlling the applicant (parent companies). Likewise, they may be entities controlling an entity controlling the applicant;
          • Entities under the same direct or indirect control as the applicant (sister companies).
      • Membership, i.e. the applicant is legally defined as a e.g. network, federation, association in which the proposed affiliated entities also participate or the applicant participates in the same entity (e.g. network, federation, association,…) as the proposed affiliated entities.

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