Symfiliosi is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-partisan organisation active in the field of fundamental rights research since 2005, with a strong track record of involvement in EU funded research on anti-discrimination, asylum and immigration, migrant integration, data protection and data rights, labour law, trafficking, disability, the rights of the child and reconciliation and transitional justice. Symfiliosi underscores the importance of understanding civic space transformations to address challenges faced by modern democracies and advance policies and initiatives that can ameliorate dangers from contemporary socio-political developments, including harmful technologies and their use, democratic deficits and crises, proliferating warfare and human displacement and environmental degradation.

Through its policy-oriented research work spanning over 19 years, Symfiliosi developed a wide network of researchers, associates, informants and advisors in the public and the NGO sector, including public institutions with competencies in discrimination, asylum and migration, data protection and data rights, gender based violence, Roma inclusion, rights of the child, and the penal justice system and all major private sector stakeholders in these fields. Symfiliosi maintains a wide pool of researchers, many of whom are highly esteemed academics, and professional practitioners from around the world, including Cyprus and the Cypriot diaspora.

Symfiliosi conducts primary research with focus on fieldwork and, through its CSO networks, facilitates stakeholder consultations, including the FRANET reports on the legal environment and space for CSOs in Cyprus in 2021 and 2022, the FRANET migration and asylum bulletins and the report the standing and operational space of NGOs in 2017. Drawing on the above, policy recommendations and actionable initiatives are developed.

Symfiliosi has delivered anti-discrimination and diversity trainings in the context of EU funded projects headed by Human European Consultancy and the Migration Policy Group, having previously undergone train-the-trainers sessions for this purpose. In 2021 Symfiliosi was contracted by the Council of Europe to deliver training on hate speech to selected representatives of faith-based institutions; for this task, Symfiliosi’s experts attended two 2-day train-the-trainers sessions delivered by a team of Council of Europe trainers. In early 2022 Symfiliosi’s experts attended a train-the-trainers session delivered by OSCE on hate crimes with the aim of holding training sessions to selected beneficiaries later in 2022.