Outcome UKR_D_1.1

Women, particularly those facing multiple forms of discrimination, increasingly participate in and benefit from gender-responsive reforms and justice

This outcome was not achieved during the reporting year. Women facing multiple forms of discrimination are not equally benefiting from reforms and justice ; h owever, some progress was made towards the adoption of specific measures to address the needs of the most vulnerable groups of women. At the national level, 1 68 representatives (1 62 women, 6 men ) of 74 women’s CSOs and gender advocates, representing various groups of women facing multiple forms of discrimination , contributed to the development of the comprehensive State Strategy on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men by 2030 and State Social Programme on its implementation in 2022 - 2024 (link attached) through their participation in a series of public consultations facilitated by UN Women in cooperation with the Government Commissioner for Gender Equality Policy. The civil society recommendations to the strategy were submitted to the Ministry of Social Policy, as the key institution responsible for developing the strategy, and around 70 per cent of the recommendations were considered by the Ministry. T he Ministry of Communities and Territories Development approv ed its GE Strategy 2021-2023 and its Action Plan , which was informed by a GE and HR Capacity Assessment supported by UN Women. As bound by the strategy, the Ministry established the GE Cluster under the Sectoral Working Group “ Decentralization and Regional Development ” (the list of members is attached), which includes women’s CSOs as a mandatory requirement. At the regional level, Sumy and Kherson regions integrated gender dimension s into their R egional S trategies till 2027 . Both strategies now have measures on the elimination of VAW, while the Kherson strategy also in corporates measures on women’s entrepreneurship support and access to health services by women with disabilities. Regional and local CSOs contributed to this by providing their gender-responsive provisions through dialogues with regional authorities facilitated by UN Women. In addition, w omen with disabilities and women living with HIV from targeted regions strengthened their participation in regional and local decision - making by gaining membership into the Regional Coordination Councils on combating HIV, TB and viral hepatitis and into the Regional Accessibility Committees. At the local level, grass-roots women and men from 7 target regions now benefit from 39 budget programmes, 10 socioeconomic development strategies and 4 local that include measures to address their differentiated socioeconomic needs . As a result of the successful advocacy of women living with disabilities at the community level, 13 local plans now include measures to improve the accessibility of municipal libraries and medical facilities in the communities (attached). UN Women contributed to this result by providing evidence -based policy advice and capacity development support to the Government through the continuous mobilization and empowerment of diverse women’s groups and CSOs to facilitate their participation in local decision-making. The ToC for this outcome remains applicable. UN Women will continue to support the national partners with the implementation of normative commitments on GEWE and will further invest in the meaningful engagement of women from vulnerable groups in policy development in Ukraine.

Women, particularly those facing multiple forms of discrimination, increasingly participate in and benefit from gender-responsive reforms and justice

The outcome was not achieved but important progress was made. With the escalation to full-fledged war in Ukraine in 2022, the context of women’s meaningful participation in governance, leadership and decision-making processes changed significantly. The outcome was therefore expanded to not only focus on reforms and justice processes, to ensure women’s meaningful inclusion at all levels of decision-making in response to the crisis brought on by war and in early recovery efforts. Important progress towards the outcome was made in 2022. Women’s needs and priorities are better addressed through key legislation, strategies, policies and plans developed in 2022 that hold duty bearers at all levels accountable for implementing GEWE commitments. In addition to the key documents mentioned under the other impact and outcome statements, such as the ratification of the Istanbul Convention , the revision of the NAP 1325 , the State Strategy on Equal Rights and Opportunities and the framework law on regional policy and recovery policy there were a few additional key documents that were developed in 2022. This includes the National Strategy on Decreasing the Gender Pay Gap , which was developed by the Ministry of Economy following commitments by Ukraine undertaken in the framework of the Biarritz Partnership and the UN Women-ILO-OECD initiative for equal pay (EPIC) in 2020. Once approved and implemented, the strategy will support the Government, employers’ associations, workers’ organizations (trade unions), academia and CSOs in taking concrete steps to reduce the gender pay gap. Furthermore, various local gender-responsive initiatives, plans and budgets were developed, approved and implemented by local authorities to ensure that the needs of women and girls are adequately addressed. For example, women with disabilities gained better access to healthcare, information, rehabilitation, social and administrative services in 14 communities of Kherson, Sumy, Chernivtsi, Volyn and Ivano-Frankivsk regions through a number of gender-responsive community plans and initiatives launched by local authorities. These initiatives were largely a result of the active advocacy by local women’s groups and collaboration between women’s civil society and local authorities at the community level. Key duty bearers have enhanced their institutional capacity and commitment to advance GEWE in Ukraine. Considering the national crisis brought on by the full-fledged war, it is particularly commendable that many national duty bearers demonstrated an enhanced commitment to gender equality during a turbulent time. In addition to developing and/or approving the key strategic documents outlined above, various government authorities conducted gender audits and developed subsequent action plans in 2022. This included the State Statistics Service of Ukraine (SSSU) developing an elaborate plan for gender-responsive changes in policies and procedures following their gender audit. Additionally, the National Agency for Civil Service (NACS) took effective measures to promote cross-cutting gender mainstreaming in public administration by institutionalizing gender audits as integral to government processes. Key to doing so was the development of a unified training curriculum, “Conducting gender audits in executive bodies and local self-governance institutions” , in cooperation with the Office of the Government Commissioner for Gender Equality Policy. The curriculum was approved and introduced by NACS as part of the official professional training for civil servants and local self-governance officials. Women from civil society have enhanced opportunities and capacities to actively participate in and influence decision-making processes at all levels. Various newly established initiatives in 2022 also enhanced the ability of women to meaningfully participate in decision-making processes at various levels. This includes, for example, the establishment of local Coordination Councils on GE in three communities of Kherson, Sumy and Chernivtsi regions and a working group on coordination of humanitarian response to GBV in Volyn regional state administration. National women’s CSO representatives were also included in the Inter-Agency Working Group on CRSV, established by the Government. Two CSOs (La Strada-Ukraine and the Ukrainian Women Lawyers Association ‘JurFem’) were also assigned to co-coordinate the work of the thematic subgroups “Trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation” and “Access to justice and accountability”. The Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights also strengthened its monitoring of the human rights of vulnerable groups of women and men in the context of crises. The Office established a tool to monitor the situation of the most vulnerable women and men through the development of two methodologies on monitoring the gender-responsive measures of local self-government bodies in response to COVID-19 and the humanitarian crisis. The tools were developed with the direct participation of 17 women representing eight CSOs working with vulnerable groups of women. More broadly, all key laws, policies, strategies and plans outlined above are underpinned by recommendations from civil society women shared with duty bearers through various multi-stakeholder consultations, working groups and dialogue platforms. (Read more under indicator 0.1.5 and narrative question 10.) UN Women considers it a particularly noteworthy achievement that duty bearers from the Government, UN agencies and other partners continue to prioritize consultations and dialogues with women from civil society in planning processes, to ensure that their needs and priorities are adequately addressed. UN Women contributed significantly to all of these important results through the following support: Providing expert technical input to the Government and various partners during the drafting of the key documents, through international and national experts on, for example, gender mainstreaming in public policy. Facilitating public consultations between the Government and other duty bearers with women’s CSOs, including those representing women from vulnerable groups/LNOB categories, to provide direct recommendations to key national processes. Conducting capacity development activities for government counterparts, such as the trainings for MCTD representatives on gender-responsive regional/local policymaking and trainings for the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and regional offices on the rights of women with disabilities, as well as providing support in conducting the SSSU gender audits and new NACS curriculum. Supporting the mobilization and capacity development of women’s civil society for their active participation in decision-making and planning processes—for example, the capacity development of 156 women with disabilities, 80 rural women and 10 Roma women to increase their knowledge and skills on women’s leadership, gender-responsive humanitarian support, the rights of women with disabilities, and advocacy and participation. Developing various knowledge and research products that can ensure evidence-based decision-making by duty bearers—for example, conducting a gender analysis of the institutional response to the crisis caused by the full-fledged war and developing corresponding recommendations for the Government of Ukraine, regional administrations and local self-governing bodies. The theory of change (ToC) is mostly not valid due to changes in the context, programmes and operations. As the new Strategic Note (SN) was developed as an interim and only for one year, a new ToC will be developed for the next SN which will cover a longer period to better reflect the rapidly changing context and needs and priorities for women and girls. The new ToC will need to fully capture changes related to gender-responsive governance.