STATEMENT
by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations
H.E. Mr. Yuriy Sergeyev
at the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women
(11 March 2013, New York)
Madam Chair, distinguished delegates,
Violence against women and girls, domestic violence should not be considered as private matter. Violence entrenches human rights and fundamental freedoms. We condemn discrimination against women and girls in all its manifestations. By all relevant means we implement the policy of elimination of discrimination against women, in accordance with Articles 2, 5, 6 and other articles of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Having signed the CEDAW Convention, and by adopting relevant legislative documents at the national level, namely: the Law “On Prevention of Domestic Violence”, the Law “On social work with families, children and youth”, the Law “On Social Services”, Ukraine recognized its obligations to eliminate violence against the personality, to help victims and condemn offenders.
In the Ukrainian legislation the notion “gender discrimination” corresponds to the notion “discrimination against women” defined by the Convention and covers both direct and indirect discrimination.
By the prohibition of direct and indirect forms of discrimination, the state promotes equal treatment of men and women. The definition of gender discrimination, contained in the Law, covers legal (dejure) and actual (defacto) discrimination. This confirms a focus of the Law on promoting both equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women, the definitions of which are contained in the Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine “On ensuring equal rights and opportunities for men and women”.
Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations in cooperation with international donors share successful practices. In particular their activity relates to supporting family violence centers, work with offenders, supporting of hotlines for victims of abuse, rape, human trafficking and children’s rights protection.
Amendments are being made to the national legislation to improve the system of combating domestic violence. In 2011 Ukrainian parliament adopted a new Law on combatting human trafficking. A number of legal acts were adopted by Ukraine in order to prevent domestic violence. Among them is the Law “On Prevention of Domestic Violence”, which defines the mechanism for combating domestic violence and protecting victims of such violence. Still, the implementation of the Law and its mechanism needs further improvement.
The “hotline” network has been launched in Ukraine. These hotlines operate in the social services centers, community and charitable organizations. Their main goal is to provide free of charge psychological, social, medical, legal and information services to those who called the “hotline”.
Ukraine was among the first states to support the United Nations Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign, launched in March, 2008. As a result of cooperation of the Government of Ukraine and civil society National Action Plan to Stop Violence was adopted in Ukraine.
Among 17 other states, Ukraine signed the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence thus declared its readiness to apply European standards to fight violence against women and girls.
The issue of combating violence remains on the agenda of all UN member states. It acquires many new forms, and too often society doesn’t pay enough attention to it despite of rapid development of information technologies. With the aim to achieve success in combating gender violence a number of tasks has been defined to be solved by Ukraine, including:
- overcoming of gender-based stereotypes;
- continuous monitoring and rapid response to gender discrimination, taking into account many cases of inadequate use of female image;
- carrying out systematic work with individuals who commit violence.
We would like to confirm Ukraine's commitment to implement a number of international arrangements to ensure gender equality and empowerment of women, particularly agreed during the Fourth World Conference on Women and 23rd special session UN General Assembly.
I thank you, Madam Chair.