The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)  was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in March 2014 for the period 2014-2020 replacing and building upon the EIDHR 2006-2013. This thematic instrument is the successor to the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights established upon the initiative of the European Parliament in 1994. The instrument reflects the high political profile and specific Treaty mandates relating to the development and consolidation of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and will bring financial support worldwide to activities in this area.

For the period 2014-2020 the EIDHR has a total budget of 1.104 billion EUR. Part of this budget has been made available for country allocations through the “Country-Based Support Scheme (CBSS)” in order to support specific initiatives at local level. In Palestine, the country allocations made available through the EIDHR-CBSS amounted 14, 4 million EUR for the period of 2001-2015. Several local calls for proposals (CfPs) have been launched to commit these funds. Approximately 75 projects have been financed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

The global objective of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) 2014-2017 is to enhance the respect for implementation and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in line with international and regional human rights standards, conventions and instruments, and to strengthen their protection, promotion and monitoring, mainly through support to relevant CSOs, human rights defenders (HRDs) and victims of repression and abuse. It also aims at supporting, developing and consolidating democracy in third countries by enhancing participatory and representative democracy, strengthening the overall democratic cycle, in particular by reinforcing an active role for civil society within this cycle, the rule of law and improving the reliability of electoral processes through means of election observation missions.

In Palestine, the global objective of the Country-Based Support Scheme (CBSS) is to specifically strengthen the role of Palestinian civil society (CS) in the promotion and monitoring of human rights to increase the ownership of the local NGOs and support their own initiatives as to build their project management capacities as well as their capacities in promoting human rights and democracy to address mainly objectives 2 and 5 of the EIDHR Strategy Paper.