Through its membership in the Council of Europe Conference of INGOs (where many of the Liaison Group CSOs are also members), Volonteurope, together with partners in the “Action for Social Rights” Committee, has developed and launched the Social Rights Tracker.
The Tracker is a secure, online platform, available in English and French, for collecting and documenting testimonies of situations, submitted by organisations and individuals, where social and economic rights, dignity of any person or group of people, are violated. With advanced security and privacy measures built into the online alert system, to protect the identity, safety, and wellbeing of those wishing to submit an encrypted alert, the Tracker offers a mechanism for reporting and publishing fact-checked information on cases of social rights violations in Council of Europe and EU members states.
The Tracker is collecting alerts and publishing articles and resources linked to five main themes:
- Employment, training, and labour rights
- Equal opportunities and social inclusion
- Health, social security, and social protection
- Families and children
- Migration
The Tracker is also a place to highlight good practices from NGOs, academic institutions, institutional bodies, as well as stories where, through solidarity and support for advocacy, injustices against people’s social and economic rights are successfully and rightfully challenged and overcome.
How it works
Restrictions on social and economic rights of individuals and groups, including civil society organizations, erodes democracy. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Russian war on Ukraine, and global economic and ecological crises, we have witnessed a rise in violations of social and economic rights of people and NGOs representing them, often disproportionately hitting those finding themselves in vulnerable situations.
By sending an alert, concerned stakeholders can contribute to the Social Rights Tracker to give visibility to situations and context that either undermine or indeed reinforce respect for social and economic rights, considered in an integrated human rights perspective.
To determine the most effective response and to recommend action, the alerts gather factual, accurate and timely information on the structural patterns and trends affecting social and economic rights of persons, groups and civil society organisations in the Council of Europe and EU member states.
The Social Rights Tracker is an online collaborative tracking platform led by the civil society organizations, set up by the Committee “Action for Social Rights” of the Conference of INGOs, with support from the INGO-Service Association and the Joint Research Unit on Law, Religion, Enterprise and Society at the University of Strasbourg.
Save the date!
An information and capacity building session which will be organised by Volonteurope on Tuesday 20 June 2023 at 15:00 in Brussels. More information, including a registration, will be launched next month.