Three committees are today in focus:

Committee on Foreign Affairs & Committee on European Integration

Hanna Hopko, Head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Mariia Ionova, Deputy Head of the Committee on European Integration held a meeting with Georgiy Belan, Vice-Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova.

At the beginning of the meeting, the parties observed the positive trend in the bilateral interrelations and stressed importance of their further deepening through mutually beneficial cooperation. The Moldovan side laid emphasis on the high consequence of launching a joint control over the border checkpoint “Kuchurgan” that gave Ukraine a practical tool to prop the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova. At the present stage of the mutual interrelations, a wider collaboration of the border troops in the security sphere is supposed to be of top priority as both of the countries are opposing the Russian aggression. The undeviating line of Ukraine’s straight-out policy towards the foe without was underscored along with Russia’s responsibility for unleashing the armed conflict in Ukraine.

H. Hopko denoted at the meeting that Ukraine is ready to render Moldova its consulting and expert knowledge as to protection of information space, opposing the Russian propaganda etc. Particular attention was drawn to the great capacity in development of the mutual economic ties and undertaking joint actions at the international scene.

Committee on Family Matters, Youth Policy, Sports and Tourism

The committee’s first deputy head met with a delegation of the European Council. At the beginning of the meeting, the Ukrainian party stressed that prevention of domestic violence is of utter importance. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine considered and adopted (on the first reading) a draft of the law on prevention and counteraction of domestic violence prepared by the Committee on Family Matters, Youth Policy, Sports and Tourism.

A gender equality expert from the delegation was familiarized in details of the innovations and expectations over the above draft bill. She underlined that the European Council is working according to the Istanbul Convention standards and Ukraine is hoped to introduce them, too.

It was then explained that the a.m. law was dealt with thoroughly for its second reading. The child protection issue, including refined guardianship bodies’ powers in protection against domestic violence, was significantly improved. A child-offender notion, features of the preventive treatment to them, introduction of a violation occurrences registry are the novelties to the law, too. The bill also proposes to enhance a civil society’s role in fighting and preventing domestic violence inasmuch as without its hand a state is not capable of overpowering this negative development on its own. Once a citizen is aware of a domestic violence occurrence, he must notify a local authority, a national police office or a domestic violence prevention call-centre. There are hopes that the Parliament will adopt the domestic violence prevention law this very autumn.

One of the European Council’s international experts underscored that involvement of the civilians at large in averting domestic violence would contribute a lot to this end, worthy to be backed by all means.

As the Istanbul Convention is also aimed to sharpen awareness of society in а wide variety of different sorts of violence against women and domestic violence at length, added she, “ratification of the Convention is of utter importance to Ukraine”.

The European delegates extended their thanks to the committee for its collaboration with the European Council driving at improvement of child’s rights protection laws, providing prevention and counteraction of domestic violence.

The committeemen were invited at the meeting to participate in a seminar within the framework of the Action plan for Ukraine 2015-2017 with the topic “The Istanbul Convention: Sharing skills in forming institutional devices of prevention and counteraction of violence against women and domestic violence”, which is scheduled to take place in Budapest, Hungary. The event is supposed to be attended by some countries to have already ratified the Convention, able hence to share the appropriate knowledge as to its implementation accordingly.

Summarizing up the sitting’s results, the committee’s first deputy head expressed his gratitude to the EC delegation for the assistance in fighting domestic violence and stressed that the committee would actively cooperate with the bodies of the European Council related to protection of child’s rights.

The parliamentary committees’ administrative staff took a two-day training of practical skills in the newest e-technologies.

The training with the topic “High-performance intercourse: How to use Internet and social media tools in parliamentary everyday work” was conducted by a public organization “Internews-Ukraine” within the USAID Rada Programme providing by the East Europe Foundation. The training teamed up staffs of a variety of committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

During the training period the trainees have been sharpening their skills in the social networks’ principles, the use of visual e-tools for writing and publishing, basic video-services. The Parliament’s role and place in the Ukraine’s information space were also scrutinized. The trainees practiced in writing functional texts capable of attracting a wide audience and interacting with the audience through social media. Thanks to the highly experienced trainers the study was easily understandable and extremely useful for the everyday work. The trainers were made available by Internews-Ukraine, Civic Organization “Committee of voters of Ukraine”, the USAID Rada Programme.
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