The UNP EaP WG1 “Democracy, Human Rights, Good Governance and Stability” members discussed the following issues:
- The agenda of the Eastern Partnership Forum: news and proposals.
- The discussion of the implementation of the group’s action plan for 2020-2021: priorities for the work of the Group, what to leave, what to change
- The exchange of views and activities: what the members of the group are working on and what opportunities exist to support the work of organizations – members of the UNP and the group.
- The expectations from the Ukraine-EU summit, the proposals of the WG1.
WG1 members discussed the possibility of supporting their colleagues from the Belarusian Civil Society Platform participating in the mass protests in Belarus after the presidential election. As a result of the discussion, it was decided to organize an online meeting with colleagues from the Belarusian National Platform to discuss the situation with the protests after the election.
The support was expressed in favour of the proposal of the participants of the meeting to raise the issue of the need to invite members of the UNP EaP to a high-level meeting of partners with the EU. Members of the platform should express alternative views on the situation with reforms in the country and the state of affairs in the field of European integration. The participants of the meeting responded positively to the proposal of WG1 members to prepare a visionary view for the development of the EaP based on 20 achievements of the Eastern Partnership.
The coordinator of the project “Support to the activities of the “UNP EaP CSF” Iryna Kosse took part in the work of WG 1 and reminded about the sources of information about the activities of the UNP on the website of the Platform, the page of Facebook and in the UNP bulletin, received by the members of the Platform. Apart from that, the competition of initiatives and the work of the Supervisory Board were discussed. As a result of the selection, 9 initiatives were supported according to the topics defined by the group during the previous meetings.
It was also reported that the annual UNP conference is planned to be held online at the end of October this year, the conference program is under development and will soon be proposed to the members of the Steering Committee for discussion and approval.
The participants of the meeting discussed the priority issues of the activity of the Platform, in particular, the members of WP1 drew attention to various areas of Government policy that need analysis and support from the members of the group. According to WG1 members, particular attention should be given to the support of the Istanbul Convention, as well as the study of the impact of GOVID-19 on the current political and security situation, migration flows, and the process of social development.
The participants of the meeting also raised the issue of the state of affairs in the partnership between Ukraine-Moldova and Georgia, in particular regarding joint plans for the future. It was suggested to prepare joint statements with partners, so that not to be confined to the processes of the Association Agreement with the EU within the country, but to consider them in a comparative context. The participants of the meeting also drew attention to the need to establish an expert group in the framework of the Association Agreement with the EU and increase opportunities to inform citizens about the benefits of the AA.
In addition, the WG 1 members raised the issue of insufficient activity of WG1 members in the work of the Forum and called on the members of the group to be more interested in affairs at the regional level and to build cooperation with international partners.
The information was provided by UNP WG1 coordinator Iryna Sushko
