The Council of Europe

Founded in 1949, the Council of Europe seeks to develop throughout Europe common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals.
Aims:
- to protect human rights, pluralist democracy and the rule of law;
- to promote awareness and encourage the development of Europe's cultural identity and diversity
- to find common solutions to the challenges facing European society such as:
? discrimination against minorities, xenophobia, intolerance;
? bioethics and cloning;
? terrorism, trafficking in human beings, organised crime and corruption, cybercrime, violence against children;
- to consolidate democratic stability in Europe by backing political, legislative and constitutional reform.

Social cohesion: a Council of Europe priority
Social cohesion of a modern democratic society is defined as society's ability to secure long-term well-being of all its members, including equitable access to available resources, respect for human dignity with due regard for diversity, personal and collective autonomy and responsible participation. Il pre-supposes the existence of a social commitment to reduce disparities and to avoid polarisation, and of a shared responsability of different actors of civil society: public autorities, business, social actors and citizens.

European dialogue platform on ethical and solidarity-based initiatives for combating poverty and social exclusion
Since 2004, the Council of Europe created the platform of dialogue in order to support the exchanges between the various actors of the European society. Thus, the dialogue is now open between the European authorities and the European networks of ethical responsible initiatives.

The IRIS inter-network
This approach gave birth in January 2007 to a new independent entity: IRIS, the European inter-network of ethical and responsible initiatives, composed of European networks with the active participation of the Council of Europe and the Autonomous Province of Trento. Supporting the ideological values of the Council of Europe, IRIS is a central actor of the dialogue platform for the development of social cohesion.

To Council of Europe website
To the General Directorate of Social Cohesion of the COE