The “Empowering communities for intersectional justice and litigation” (EQUAL) project supports marginalised communities and lawyers to pursue intersectional, community-driven strategic litigation under EU law, including under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The two-year project is implemented between 2025 July and 2027 June in 4 EU countries: Czechia, Greece, Italy and Hungary.
Strategic litigation can protect fundamental rights and drive systemic change when rooted in the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Yet racialised communities, disabled people, and others at risk of exclusion continue to face major obstacles in accessing justice include:
- discrimination
- limited legal support
- lack of trust in institutions
- legal systems that treat issues in silos rather than through an intersectional lens.
As a result, strategic litigation efforts often fail to fully reflect the needs of communities most affected by rights violations.
In the Czech context, FORUM focuses primarily on supporting people with disabilities and Roma communities, particularly in Prague, the Central Bohemian Region, and Ostrava. In doing so, it addresses structural challenges in Czechia, such as segregation, limited access to legal assistance, and the overrepresentation of Roma children and children with disabilities in institutional care.
Project Objectives
The aim is to strengthen the capacity of communities, human rights lawyers, and other relevant stakeholders to effectively engage in intersectional and community-driven strategic litigation practice under EU law, including the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
To achieve its aim (see above) the specific objectives are to:
- Ensure access to justice and enforcement of rights through the empowerment of marginalised communities (e.g. racialised people (e.g. Roma, people with a migrant background) and people with disabilities, etc);
- Ensure intersectionality in strategic litigation through capacity building of fundamental rights bodies, legal professions.
- Ensuring community-driven strategic litigation through building partnership between communities and legal professionals and prioritising community needs
Main Activities
- Community empowerment: Build knowledge and skills within marginalised communities by providing tools, information and training to understand and defend their rights and engage with legal professionals and fundamental rights bodies.
- Focus group research: Conduct focus groups with marginalised communities, legal professionals and fundamental rights bodies to identify key barriers to accessing justice and inform project actions.
- Setting-up community paralegal teams and legal clinics: Create community-based paralegal teams and local legal clinics to bridge the gap between affected communities and legal experts, reduce barriers to justice and enable early legal support.
- Intersectional capacity building: Deliver training for legal professionals and fundamental rights bodies to strengthen intersectional approach.
- Advocacy and legal actions: Use evidence from the project to inform advocacy efforts at national and EU level, promoting better understanding and uptake of intersectional and community-driven strategic litigation and policy-making.
Project Partners
The project consortium includes:
- Awen Amenca – project coordinator; Czechia
- Dzsaj Bhim Community– Hungary
- European Roma Rights Center – Belgium
- Forum for Human Rights – Czechia
- Greek Council of Refugees – Greece
- Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights – Italy
- Pro bono publico – Greece
- Validity Foundation – Hungary
- BRIDGE EU – Belgium
Full name of the project
Empowering Communities for Intersectional Justice and Litigation (EQUAL) 101215016- EQUAL- CERV-2024-CHAR-LITI
This project is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.