Month: July 2026

On July 10, the Civil Society Advisory Panel of the Platform for Ensuring Gender Mainstreaming and Inclusion in Recovery met online. The participants summed up the results of the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC-2026) in Gdansk, discussed the lessons of the conference, and identified priorities for further work.

The key topic of the meeting was strengthening the gender component in recovery processes and its mainstreaming into Ukraine’s European integration agenda.

Kateryna Levchenko, the Government Commissioner for Gender Policy, emphasized that the ongoing dialogue between the Government and civil society has already become an effective mechanism for joint work.

“Our goal is to ensure the effective implementation of the gender component in recovery processes. Recovery concerns all areas of state policy, so it is important to find new formats for interaction. “Gender equality is a cross-cutting theme for both Ukraine’s recovery and European integration,” she noted.

According to Kateryna Levchenko, during the preparation for URC-2026, government structures, the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, international partners and UN Women worked together to strengthen the gender component of the conference. A document is currently being prepared that will systematize the experience of Gdansk and will help use it when organizing subsequent international events.

Anna-Maria Chaikovska, Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, emphasized that this year’s Conference for the first time clearly demonstrated the connection between Ukraine’s recovery and its path to membership in the European Union.

She also pointed out that high-quality gender statistics are becoming a necessary component of European integration. That is why a memorandum of cooperation was concluded during the URC between the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Government Commissioner, the UWF and the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), which opens up opportunities for the implementation of European approaches to data collection and analysis.

The participants paid special attention to the side event of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund “Human Resources in Recovery – the Women’s Dimension”, where they presented the results of two analytical studies: on the economic integration of women into the labor market and the potential of Ukrainian women currently in EU countries for the recovery of Ukraine.

Natalia Karbowska, Director on Strategic Development of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, noted that it was the analytics, partnerships and cooperation with Ukrainian and international organizations that became one of the greatest achievements of this year’s conference.

At the same time, the meeting formulated recommendations that need to be taken into account when preparing for the next Ukraine Recovery Conference.

Recommendations on increasing the visibility of women’s and feminist organizations and promoting the principles of gender mainstreaming at the Ukraine Recovery Conferences (URC):

• – Continue work on developing practical recommendations for policy development based on gender statistics and analytical research
• – Plan and make wider use of gender research results in preparation for URC
• – Strengthen coordination with other civil society organizations on organizing URC events and including gender issues
• – Plan URC events in broad partnership with NGOs and government partners, in particular with NGOs outside the bubble of women’s and feminist organizations, to include those working with the “hard” component of reconstruction
• – Continue advocacy for the inclusion of representatives of women’s and feminist organizations in URC events
• – Consider alternative events and formats to the main URC program that allow communicating the results of gender research, raising issues of gender mainstreaming and involving experts from women’s and feminist organizations, and thus influencing the URC and recovery agenda
• – Establish more active cooperation with organizations and activists who represent Ukrainian women abroad, and facilitate their meaningful engagement in a dialogue on the role of women in reconstruction and the development of relevant state policies.
• – In preparing analytics for the URC, shift the focus from the general category of “women” to intersectionality – collecting and analyzing data taking into account the specific needs of different groups: IDP women, rural women, veterans, women with disabilities, elderly single women.
• – Transform horizontal networking in the URC fields from an informal track to a systemic practice – create permanent cross-border working groups that unite women’s NGOs within Ukraine and organizations of Ukrainian migrant women abroad.

The Civil Society Advisory Panel participants also proposed a number of recommendations to strengthen the participation of rural women – in particular, to ensure the systematic representation of rural women’s civil society organizations in the URC program, including panel discussions, working groups and consultations, so that the voice of women from communities is heard when shaping recovery policies.

The meeting also discussed the implementation of the Work Plan of the Civil Society Advisory Panel for 2026. In particular, a number of analytical studies were presented that have already been published on the Platform’s website or are being prepared for publication. The NGO “Intellect of Sumy Region” presented the online tool “GenPlan”, which helps communities model various recovery and development scenarios taking into account the principles of gender mainstreaming.

Summing up the meeting, the participants agreed that preparations for the next Ukraine Recovery Conference should begin now so that the voice of civil society, analytical work, and a gender approach are even more visible on the international agenda.