OSCE Senior Gender Adviser Amarsanaa Darisuren visits Ukraine

From 3 to 6 September 2017, OSCE Senior Gender Adviser Amarsanaa Darisuren visited Ukraine, where she held meetings with government officials, including representatives of the ministries for foreign and internal affairs and social policy, to discuss key developments in gender equality in the country.

The discussions focused on the government’s current efforts to implement the National Action Plan on UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and the co-ordinating role of the recently established interagency working group.

The meeting in the Foreign Ministry touched upon the challenges of providing support to 1,6 million internally displaced persons, most of whom are women and children. The Ukrainian government representatives expressed an interest in the OSCE’s experience in empowering displaced women to better integrate into their new communities by learning new skills to improve their chances of employment.

During her trip, Darisuren took part in the launch of the second OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine-supported five-day specialized training course for police in Dnipro on combating domestic violence. At the Dnipro State University of the Interior, she addressed trainees from the POLINA mobile police groups, which combat domestic violence.

Darisuren also met with members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) and participated in the Gender Co-ordination Meeting of the Mission’s Gender Focal Points. They shared their views and experiences of best practices and challenges in gender mainstreaming the SMM’s monitoring in the Mission’s daily work. Darisuren advised the SMM gender experts on how OSCE field operations can improve the implementation of the OSCE 2004 Action Plan on the Promotion of Gender Equality by developing their own results-based action plans.