With the financial support of the EU –pre-accession assistance programme IPA, Office of the Ombud implemented the project “Establishing a comprehensive system for antidiscrimination protection”. The project was implemented in partnership with the Office for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities of the Republic of Croatia and the Office of the Ombud had the leading role in project implementation.

Project consisted of three components: Twinning, Supply and Service. Overall amount of the project budget was 800.000,00 euro. The amount of 738.000,00 euro was financed by the EU and the amount of 62.000,00 euro was financed from the national budget.

Implementation of both Supply and Service contracts was to strengthen the infrastructural capacities of the beneficiary institutions.

Implementation period of the Supply contract lasted from August 25th to November 21st 2011. Within this contract beneficiary institutions have purchased IT equipment which was necessary for their everyday work as well as for their work with complaints database (Office of the Ombud) and equality database (Office for Human Rights and Rights of National Minorities).

Service contract was implemented during the first half of 2013. Within this contract two databases were developed, one for each of the beneficiary institutions.

The overall objective of the Twinning component was to establish an efficient and effective system for combating discrimination, thus raising the level of protection against discrimination in the Republic of Croatia. The project has strengthened the capacity of the two beneficiary institutions – the Office of the Ombudsman as the central body responsible for combating discrimination and the Office for Human Rights and Rights of National Minorities as the state body directly involved in combating discrimination. An efficient system for monitoring reported cases of discrimination and for collecting and monitoring equality data was developed. Finally, a comprehensive system for supporting victims of discrimination was elaborated.

Partner in the implementation of Twinning component was the Austrian Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights