Kharkiv Institute for Social Research (KhISR) – non-profit and non-governmental organization, founded on March 10th, 1999. The Institute is independent from influence of any bodies and organizations, both public and private.
The Institute’s Goal is the development of an open civil society and democracy, respect for human rights and freedoms, raising legal awareness of the Ukrainian citizens.
The Institute project fields are as follows:
- access to justice in Ukraine;
- assessment of police activity (national and regional levels), public oversight of the police;
- preventing of torture and ill-treatment in custodial settings;
- living conditions in social institutions;
- reforming of social services at the community level;
- introducing new catering system (meals ready to eat) at police custody units;
- quality of medical aid in prisons;
- analysis of discriminatory practices on different population groups (aged people, foreigners, people of other nationalities, etc.);
- security of communities in the regions that are involved in the military conflict in Ukraine;
- rights of internally displaced persons, including children and sick.
Donors of KhISR are the British Council, the Council of Europe, OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine, the European Commission, UNDP in Ukraine, UNICEF, International Renaissance Foundation, Danish Institute for Human Rights, National Endowment for Democracy, the Canadian Embassy in Ukraine, the US Embassy in Ukraine, Open Society Institute, International Organization for Migration, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
The Institute has an experience in project implementation in the cooperation with governmental and non-governmental organizations:
- Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine
- Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine
- State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine
- Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
- Ministry of Interior of Ukraine
- Ukrainian Research Institute of Social and Forensic Psychiatry and Drug Abuse of Ministry of Health of Ukraine
- Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights
- Local/minicipal authorities of Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Odesa, Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and other regions of Ukraine
- Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA), United Kingdom
- Hague Institute for Internationalisation of Law, HiiL Innovative Justice (HiiL), the Netherlands (KhISR is a regional partner of the Institute)
- Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), United Kingdom
- Association of Members of Independent Monitoring Boards (AMIMB), United Kingdom
- Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KhHRPG), Ukraine
- The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU), Ukraine
- Vostok-SOS, Ukraine
All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV, Ukraine etc.
