Volgograd: «Dialogue without borders» opens the borders

International women’s forum “Dialogue without borders” was held in Volgograd for the first time on March 14 – 16. Its organizers were Volgograd Municipality, Volgograd City Council and Volgograd Council of Women.

More than 240 female representatives of six countries took part in the work of the forum including foreign delegations from partner and twin cities of Volgograd: Dijon (France), Chemnitz and Koln (Germany), Turin (Italy) as well as Vilnius (Republic of Lithuania) and Lagos (Nigeria). Russia was represented at this intentional session by several cities: Moscow, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Elista, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Ulyanovsk.

The main goal of the forum became the establishment of contacts and development of cooperation among women’s organizations from different cities, interested in solving of problems for women’s defense, exchange of experience, strengthening of positive image of a woman in power. All this things are the instrument for the development of the civil society – one of the key elements of the development of territories.

The work of the forum resulted into the Resolution, in which the initiative to held the International women’s forum “Dialogue without borders” in Volgograd annually was supported by the participants.

One of the proposals added to the Resolution was to create an International Observatory on Violence Victims (hereinafter "the Observatory") based in Torino under the presidency of the City of Torino represented by the Deputy Mayor for Equal Opportunities.

The Observatory will set up a databank with a scientific, normative and multidisciplinary approach by means of monitoring, social inquiries, research, experimentation, integrated strategies, collection of virtuous examples and worldwide experiences.

Every year the Observatory will award a person that has distinguished him/herself at international level in the harmonization of international criminal law, prevention and fight against violence.

Every year the Observatory will publish an Observatory Annual Report recording the performed and planned activities, programs, research topics. The Report will be sent to Volgograd and presented at the international women's forum "Dialogue without borders".

Also there was made a decision to set up in Volgograd the international intermunicipal recourse center which will become the permanent site for meetings of women – leaders from municipalities of our partner and twin cities, as well as other cities of the world. Volgograd is one of the leading cities in Russia, having a great number of partner and twin cities. Thus, such a site will serve to public interests, strengthening of friendship and international links, development of women’s leadership in different professional spheres and cultures of municipalities from different countries.

Furthermore, the participants of the forum supported the idea of establishment of the annual international contest among the women from partner and twin cities, having made the most significant contribution in the life of their city. For this purpose the organization committee including the representatives of municipalities of partner and twin cities will be set up and the committee will workout the terms and conditions for the contest.

It is supposed that the main award of the contest will be given to its winner in March 2013 – during the second International women’s forum «Dialogue without borders.

27.04.2012

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