Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze held a working meeting with representatives of civil society organizations to discuss their role in implementation of national gender policy and further cooperation.

Addressing the audience, the Vice Prime Minister noted that the process of overcoming stereotypes is rather difficult, while the events of recent years have entailed tremendous transformations. "We are getting back to the idea of freedom and equality, including in gender policy", she said, stressing that the Government's Action Plan puts an emphasis on gender priorities for the first time.

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze briefed on gender mainstreaming priorities, among which, in particular, are the development of the National Plan for the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), revision and modernization of the National Action Plan for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, pursuing a comprehensive government policy in the sector of prevention and counteraction to domestic violence.

Regarding security and defense, the Vice Prime Minister highlighted two major pilot projects. This is the introduction of the Gender Advisers institution, including on a voluntary basis, and gender education in higher educational institutions in the security and defense sector.

Moreover, it is important to streamline the issue of compulsory gender expertise by developers when drafting of statutory instruments.

The meeting was attended by representatives of over 70 NGOs. They voiced a number of problematic issues to the Vice-Prime Minister with a request to provide support in resolving them. In particular, it regards the development and adoption of bylaws to ensure the implementation of legislation on combating domestic violence, which was adopted by Parliament in December last year. There were aired comments on the need to pay attention to children witnesses of domestic violence. The attendees also tackled the need for additional training of National Police officers and control of the correctness of their protocols on the facts of domestic violence so that such protocols could serve evidence in courts. In this context, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze expressed hope that the agreed proposals for amending the Law of Ukraine "On Prevention and Combating Domestic Violence" in the part of the formation of the Unified Register of Domestic Violence Cases will in the near future be takled by the Governmental Commissioner for Gender Policy together with the Ministry of Social Policy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.