COMIR Projects

1. Coordination of information resources
2. Presentation of standards and legislation, their analysis and implementation
3. News reporting and dissemination of information
4. Capacity building
5. Promotion of state-NGO-IGO dialogue

1. Coordination of information resources

Project

COMIR Database, Clearinghouse of Information on Minority and Multiethnic Policy Issues, /comir/db/

Lead organization

LGI, OSI Budapest, Hungary

The COMIR Database is an online database of annotated links comprising the resources available on the websites of the Consortium members and related to the topic of ethnic and national minorities, human rights protection and policy issues. The information contained in the Database is relevant to the OSCE region. Included in the Database are reports compiled by various organizations active in this field, case studies, legal documents, articles, books and others.
The goal of the project is to create a user-friendly virtual database which would provide the end-user with a reliable and efficient search tool, as well as make the knowledge more accessible to the target audience consisting of NGOs, minorities, policy-makers, public officials, scholars and media at the international, national and local levels. Furthermore, the project aims at providing research services to policy makers upon request.

Project:

Database of Minority-Related Documents Available on the UN Website

Lead organization:

CEDIME-SE, Greece

The purpose of this project, coordinated by COMIR member CEDIME-SE, is to create a single, structured and user-friendly database with links to the vast number of documents available on the various UN websites and dealing with, or of interest to, minorities around the world. They include state reports to and recommendations of UN Treaty or Charter Bodies; reports by Special Rapporteurs or Representatives, as well as academics or NGOs to various UN fora that are made available on the UN web pages; summary records of UN GA, agency or Treaty/Charter Body meetings and press releases; etc. It has been noticed that thousands of such documents include information on, or of interest to, minorities, which cannot be located through the UN search engines. The need for such and other related databases has been outlined in the 1999 and 2001 sessions of the UN Working Group on Minorities (WGM) which has encouraged feasibility studies and/or presentations by COMIR members CEDIME, ECMI and MRGI in 1999, and by COMIR and UN WGM consultant I-Connect S.A. in 2001, but lacks the funds and the necessary flexibility to carry out such project. Once this database is created, all relevant UN web pages links on each minority will be reachable via one source, which will allow minorities, as well as policy makers, NGOs and researchers to “discover” sometimes important material that they may currently ignore, or quickly locate otherwise disparate material. There will also be an associated listserve to inform subscribers of site development and new information.