National Consultant on Women’s Leadership and Political Participation, Kyiv, Ukraine, SSA

Background:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

In Ukraine, UN Women supports the Government and civil society in advancing gender equality and implementing national and international commitments, including the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda. Its work focuses on four priority areas: (1) Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action; (2) Ending Violence against Women and Girls; (3) Women’s Economic Empowerment; and (4) Governance and Participation in Public Life. UN Women also contributes to the integration of gender equality across the United Nations system in Ukraine.

UN Women’s Strategic Note (2025–2029) is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for Ukraine and supports national priorities across humanitarian response, early recovery, and long-term reconstruction, with a focus on the humanitarian–development–peace nexus.

One of the key thematic impact areas of the UN Women Strategic Plan 2026-2029 is women’s leadership and decision-making. The efforts shall bring the following expected results in this area: 

• Greater parity in decision-making, particularly at local levels, enabled through legal reforms, special measures and institutional safeguards that prevent and respond to violence against women in public life. 
• Strengthened institutional capacity, across legislatures, public institutions, statistical offices and national women’s machineries, to track and deliver on commitments to women’s leadership. 
• Increased capacity and influence of diverse women’s rights organizations and networks, particularly those led by young women and those facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, to hold duty bearers accountable and drive change through transformative leadership and social norms change. 
• Enhanced power and visibility of women leaders and their networks, including in public and private domains where women are underrepresented.

The full-scale armed invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on 24 February 2022 is a grave violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the UN Charter. It caused untold destruction, displaced millions, and resulted in unacceptable violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and the most significant modern challenge to global peace and security. The invasion drastically changed the country’s context from development to humanitarian. Since then, there have been devastating effects in the country. Many of displaced people are particularly vulnerable, pregnant and breastfeeding women, elderly persons, those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and people directly affected by violence. In order to support the national partners in responding to the humanitarian crisis UN Women has introduced a range of the activities to address the needs of women in the affected communities and support key stakeholders in applying the gender mainstreaming approach to humanitarian response and early stage of recovery.

The recovery and reconstruction of post-war Ukraine offers an opportunity to address many of the country’s longstanding inequalities between men and women. Despite the consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion since 2022, the Government of Ukraine has demonstrated that women’s rights and gender equality remain a priority, through the adoption of gender responsive policies and legislation in 2022-2025. It is crucial that these policies and legislative commitments are translated into action to deliver a gender equal and inclusive society. Implementation of Ukraine’s recovery agenda should match this political goodwill and ensure a gender transformative approach which not only applies to the rebuilding of physical infrastructure but expands to all socio-economic spheres including social protection, labour force participation, care economy, education representation, peace building, security and defense, as well as access to quality services such as legal aid, psychological, sexual and reproductive health, political decision making, etc.

UN Women recognizes that Ukraine's recovery process needs meaningful engagement and participation of women leaders and activists to represent different voices and needs of different groups of women and girls. The women activists and leaders are leading the change in achieving transformative GEWE results at all levels: national, regional and local. Ukraine has made some progress in creating preconditions for achiev