About the MINELRES-L mailing list
Submissions: minelres-l@riga.lv
Subscription/inquiries: minelres@mailbox.riga.lv
1. List owner and donors
The MINELRES (Electronic Resources on Minorities) has been established owing to initiative and support of the following institutions:
- Center for Educational and Social Research "Baltic Insight", Riga, Latvia
- Forum Eastern Europe - Canada-based international research group, Ottawa, Canada
- SHIP - Schleswig-Holstein Institute for Peace Research at the Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany,
- UNESCO Chair on Human Rights Education, Comenius University, Slovakia,
- Center for Ethnic Studies, International Institute of Humanities and Political Science, Moscow, Russia
- Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development
The project is financed by the Soros Foundation-Latvia.
2. Goals
The main goals of the list are:
a) to provide a specialized forum for the constant discussion and exchange of information/opinions on minority human rights and related problems of the transition period in Eastern and Central Europe. Special emphasis is made on the following issues:
- legislation pertaining to minorities, implementation of international instruments relevant to treatment of minorities, practices and experiences;
- ethnic conflicts, inter-ethnic relations and ethnic policies;
- monitoring ethnic and racial hatred and racism, hate speech/literature/legislation/political behavior;
- migration and refugees flows;
- role of NGO's in the process of integration ethnic and linguistic minorities during transition to democracy.
b) To create an electronic archive of most valuable and relevant data as a more permanent record, store and source of information. The database contains the following information:
- international instruments and bilateral treaties relevant to minority rights and status;
- national legislation pertinent to situation of minorities;
- data on minority-related NGOs (both at the international and national level), their activities and documents issued by them;
- relevant publications and bibliography, electronic sources of information;
- factual data on minorities in the region;
- main developments in the policies towards minorities in the region.
This database is available to any and all who wish to retrieve the information contained in it.
c) To facilitate human rights NGOs in Eastern/Central Europe in mastering modern tools of electronic communications providing access to relevant information.
3. Content
The discussion group will provide information on:
- relevant conferences, meetings, seminars; projects in progress and projects planned, grants, fellowships and other funding opportunities;
- recent and anticipated publications of interest to participants, as well as offer dissemination of these publications by request;
- major human/minority rights events and emergencies, activities of the human rights NGOs in the region;
- legislation of Central/East European states pertinent to the human rights, minority rights, ethnopolitics; international human rights standards and particular instruments; resolutions, decisions and recommendations of the inter-governmental organizations concerning human rights, ethnic politics and related issues;
- educational and training materials - predominantly oriented towards the practical needs of NGOs in the region;
- answers to concrete inquiries of the participants;
- archives and sources of relevant information available through Internet;
- tutorial and consultations on usage of electronic communications means by NGOs and other interested institutions/persons;
- free exchange of ideas between Western specialists and NGOs' activists, academics and interested governmental officials in Central/Eastern Europe.
4. Participants
The FEE list is available to NGOs' activists, academics, relevant governmental officials, representatives of inter-governmental organizations, commentators and journalists involved in the area covered by the list. No discrimination on the basis of geographic location, institutional affiliation, political convictions or any other criteria is permitted. The mailing list submission address is:
minelres-l@riga.lv
5. Management and moderation
The project is managed by the international group of experts which includes:
- Dr Magda Opalski, Forum Eastern Europe, Ottawa, Canada
- Boris Tsilevich, Center for Educational and Social Research "Baltic Insight", Riga, Latvia
- Dr Christian Wellmann, Schleswig-Holstein Institute for Peace Research at the Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany
- Dr Silvia Mihalikova, UNESCO Chair on Human Rights Education, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
- Dr Charlotte Flindt-Petersen, Danish Human Rights Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Dr Alexander Osipov, Center for Ethnic Studies, International Institute of Humanities and Political Science, Moscow, Russia
- Dr Arthur Martirosian, Conflict Management Group, Harvard, the USA
The list is moderated and the website is maintained by Boris Tsilevich.
The MINELRES mailing list archive is available
here.
6. Subscription
Subscription is free of charge. Representatives of the NGOs from East/Central Europe are given preferences if any limitation of subscription appears inevitable. To subscribe send the following command in the body of an electronic mail message to address:
subscribe minelres-l First_Name Last_Name
For more information on the service and how to use it, send the following request in the body of a mail message to :
help
7. Languages
The main working language of the list is English. Postings in other European languages are permitted too, meanwhile, taking into account that many participants do not possess Cyrillic and Czech fonts, senders of postings in other languages than English are urged to provide these postings with brief English summary.
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