The NGO Fight for Right from Ukraine is implementing until April 2022 a project aiming at combating discrimination affecting disabled people in the country, through advocacy for improved legislation, and raising awareness about the rights of people with disabilities on the labour market. This project is carried out with the support of the European Union/Council of Europe joint programme Partnership for Good Governance, and its regional project ”Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes in the Eastern Partnership.”
The organisation Fight for Right will:
- conduct a comprehensive analysis over the legal, political and social frame of the right to work for persons with disabilities in Ukraine and statistics available in this sphere;
- based on the analysis, prepare analytical materials on amendments to the legislation to prevent discrimination;
- carry out an advocacy campaign to promote analytical materials to accelerate their implementation at the national level;
- carry out an information campaign to teach persons with disabilities to defend their rights in court, to set precedents, which will also lead to the prevention of discrimination against people with disabilities in the workplace.
Issues related to discrimination against persons with disabilities in Ukraine, especially regarding their labour rights, have been raised for a long time, but in recent years the situation has become even more severe. The COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to this. At the moment, there is an imperfect legal framework for the employment of people with disabilities and low awareness among persons with disabilities about various mechanisms of protection of violated labour rights (judicial and extrajudicial). Finally, there is also a problem of employers' prejudice that hiring of employees with disabilities could lead to additional difficulties for the employer.
This is one of the six civil society supported by our regional project on anti-discrimination, in Armenia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine aimed at increasing access to justice for groups that experience discrimination, hate speech and hate crime.
This activity is implemented in the framework of the regional project “Strengthening access to justice for victims of discrimination, hate crime and hate speech in the Eastern Partnership,” funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance II 2019-2022.
