Webinars on Democratic Competences
Symbiosis-School of Political Studies in Greece, affiliated to the Council of Europe Network, has implemented the 3rd 2022 Seminar on “Democratic Competences” online from November to December 2022. It was composed by four webinars, implemented on four weeks, every Sunday, namely on November 13, 20 & 27 and December 4 to raise awareness on human rights protection and promote active citizenship.
The first webinar was dedicated to gender equality, since women in Europe are still marginalised in political and public life, suffer discrimination in employment, are paid less for work of equal value and find themselves in poverty and unemployment more often than men. The most pronounced expression of the uneven balance of power between women and men is violence against women, which is both a human rights violation and a major obstacle to gender equality.
The second webinar on Democratic Competences focused on the challenging field of digital rights. In today’s digitalized world, the relationship between elected representatives, citizens, civil society, and political authorities is evolving. While traditional linkages are weakening, e‑tools are becoming increasingly important. In this context, it was thought that citizens should be aware of their rights and educated to participate actively in digital society.
The thematic of the third webinar on democratic competences concerned the multifaceted challenge of discrimination, which constitutes a gross human rights violation, as inequality, reinforced by racism, antisemitism, antigypsism, xenophobia and intolerance, deepens divides and destabilises democracies. Thus, developing anti-discrimination and democratic competences is essential to create inclusive and democratic societies.
Finally, the fourth webinar examined Intercultural Policy Dialogue. Since in our globally interconnected society the movement and communication across and between cultures have become more crucial than ever, intercultural dialogue is considered to be the only enduring response to tackle common challenges such as inequality, discrimination, disinformation and displacement.
More precisely:
Webinar on Democratic Competences: Gender Equality
Speaker: Nicole Petalidou,Psychologist – expert on Gender based Violence.
- Working with men to stop gender-based violence (Heinrich Geldschläger, Psychologist and Psychotherapist, CONEXUS. Atenció Formació i Investigació Psicosocials)
- Justice, Inequality and Gender-based Violence (Marianne Hester, Professor, Chair in Gender, Violence and International Policy, University of Bristol)
Webinar on Democratic Competences: Digital Rights
Speaker:Ljubisa Vrencev, co-founder Symbiosis-School of Political studies in Greece,affiliated to the Council of Europe Network
- Digital Power (Carl Miller, Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM), Demos)
- How to Educate a Digital Citizen (Iryna Sabor, Senior Advisor, The European Wergeland Centre, Oslo)
Webinar on Democratic Competences: Anti-discrimination
Speaker: Despina Syrri, Director of Symbiosis-School of Political Studies in Greece,affiliated to the Council of Europe Network
- Islamophobia, Anti-immigrant Attitudes and Religion (Konstantinos Papastathis, Assistant Professor, School of Political Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
- Black Lives Matter in the European context (Anne Bathily, Independent Consultant in Refugee Issues, Socio-economic Inclusion, and Intercultural Practices)
Webinar on Democratic Competences: Intercultural Policy dialogue
- Withering the rights: protection, securitization, and criminalization (Katarzyna Grabska, Senior Researcher, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway; Visiting Professor, Institute of Ethnology, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)
- The Intercultural Cities Network (Irena Guidikova, Head of Division, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Programmes, Council of Europe)
- European Digital Media Observatory – EDMO (Paula Gori, Secretary General, European Digital Media Observatory)
