The second regional workshop to develop a training manual on Ensuring Access to Justice for Women took place in Kyiv (Ukraine) on 7 July and was hosted by the National School of Judges of Ukraine. The meeting was opened by Ms Nataliia Shuklina, Vice Rector for Research of the National School of Judges, and Mr Volodymyr Mazurok, Administrative Vice Rector of the National School of Judges, who both underlined the importance of including gender equality material in the training of judges.

Representatives of judicial training institutions, national and international experts discussed a draft of the general part of the training manual as well as the outlines of the national parts concerning Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. The training manual will address key concepts and issues in relation to women’s access to justice, the international and regional legal framework on women’s rights and gender equality and the promotion of women’s access to justice in and through the practice of judges and prosecutors.

The training manual is being developed in the framework of the Council of Europe and the European Union project on Improving Women’s Access to Justice in Five Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine). A first regional workshop was held in Strasbourg on 18 March 2016 to agree on the outline for the training manual. Based on the feedback received at the workshop in Kyiv, a revised draft of the training manual will be discussed at a third regional workshop in Tbilisi (Georgia) in September 2016. The full draft of the manual will be presented at the regional conference of the project in Chisinau (the Republic of Moldova) on 24-25 October 2016.

Link to the agenda