On 11 December 2018 the closing meeting of Partnership for Good Governance project ‘Strengthening the Protection of National Minorities in Ukraine’ was organised in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The representatives of the project beneficiaries gathered in order to summarise the results of the project and to discuss future activity plans. The comments and proposals were expressed by the partners - Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Social Policy, Ministry of Justice, State Department for Migration Service, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, National Police.
Hallvard Gorseth, Head of Anti-discrimination Department of Council of Europe, expressed the gratitude to the Ukrainian project partners for their active involvement and stressed the role of the main mechanisms of the protection of the national minorities: the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The participants appreciated learning in the past year about the European countries’ experience and best practices on the executive structures, the consultation bodies and dialogue mechanisms for the protection of national minorities, in a form of the peer-to-peer exchanges and seminars.
Special attention was paid to the Roma-related issues in Ukraine and the work that should be done in the future together by the Council of Europe and the Ukrainian Government. The issues that will be in the focus of the future CoE activities are: tackling the stateless status of Roma, lack of IDs and their consequent absence from electoral lists and the specific situation of those who are internally displaced due to recent conflict situations.
The PGG project “Strengthening the protection of national minorities in Ukraine” is funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and implemented by the Council of Europe.