A workshop on SRHR Advocacy in the Council of Europe took place on 26-29 September 2009 in Zagreb, Croatia. The meeting was organized by Astra Network that includes 27 national NGOs from Central and Eastern European countries. About 20 representatives of these states participated in the workshop.

The aim of the workshop was to introduce the role and place of the Council of Europe in today’s world and get in depth knowledge of the European legal structure including the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union. A guest from Council of Europe, Lucja Miara was specially invited to assist in getting inner knowledge on the system of the Council of Europe. Ms. Miara provided the participants of the workshop with detailed explanation on the Council of Europe’s structure, mechanisms and possible ways of NGOs involvement in the activities of the Council of Europe.

Fundamental values of the CoE on human rights, democracy and the rule of law were highlighted and the cooperation between all member states to solve the major problems facing the society today was also emphasized.

Cooperation and contact with the dynamic elements of society, as represented by NGOs were mentioned to benefit the work of the Council of Europe. One of the main challenges of CoE is to strengthen NGOs and civil society and to develop participatory democracy on a pan-European basis.

The interactive part of the workshop was launched by taking interview from every participant asking different questions. The interviews were shot by the video, watched by the group, analyzed and commented on the behavior of every participant. This activity was very useful for the participants to evaluate own behavior, speech, body language during the interview.

The group work of the workshop participants was also very useful, interactive and unexpected for them. They were asked to form three groups of 5 people, to prepare themselves for the press conference on the topic of being granted a participatory status as an International non-governmental organization in the annual conference of INGOs in the Council of Europe.

Though the time was short, however, participants managed to prepare their speeches, distribute roles for the press conference. All three press conferences were successfully conducted by every group, again shot on video and later analyzed by the whole group. At the end of the workshops, participants received certificates of participation in Astra Network Advocacy and Communications training on SRHR Advocacy in the Council of Europe.

The outcome of the workshop was very successful and the participants enjoyed their exercises and went back to their countries with definite knowledge on CoE machinery as well as communications skills on SRHR advocacy in the media.