The Office of the Ombudsperson in partnership with UNDP and the Resource Centre for Internally Displaced Persons launched a series of trainings aimed at strengthening capacities of subnational CSOs, enhancing their professional level, and improving quality of their services and increasing effectiveness of protection of the rights of IDPs.

 

The necessity of this initiative is based on the results of the previous needs assessment conducted by the Resource Centre, which surveyed the needs of 168 subnational organizations, most of which stressed the need for new knowledge in the field of human rights protection standards.

 

"This training is dedicated to the issues of human rights protection and gender equality that are one of the most burning nowadays. Moreover, we believe that this event will help us to establish solid relations between different subnational organizations and the Office of the Ombudsperson in terms of human rights protection and new challenges faced by Ukraine," said Tetiana Durneva, Executive Director of the Donetsk branch of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine.

 

In the course of the training, subnational organizations acquired new knowledge in international standards of human rights protection, gender equality, and specifics of IDPs' rights protection, learned about implementation of these standards in the national legislation and got an opportunity to know more about mandate and activities of the national human rights institution.

 

As stated by Ms. Tymonina, the representative of the Office of the Ombudsperson, "The protection of IDPs' rights is under constant attention of the Ombudsperson, as we understand the level of vulnerability of these people. In this activity we very much rely on CSOs. Based on our experience of implementation of other Ombudsperson's mandates, a strong civil society can be an effective mechanism to prevent violations of human rights and a reliable partner of the Ombudsperson's Office."

 

Next cities hosting the trainings will be Odesa, Zaporizhia, Poltava, and Lviv.

 

This initiative is conducted with the support of UNDP's Strengthening Capacities of the Ombudsperson's Office Project, funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.