On 6 December, the Higher School of Public Administration, together with the All-Ukrainian Association of Administrative Service Centres and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ukraine, held a professional seminar on “Preventing and Combating Domestic Violence” for ASC employees.

Ukraine is actively implementing state policy in the field of preventing and combating gender-based violence, including domestic violence. Important legislative and other regulations on this issue have already been adopted, Ukraine has acceded to the Istanbul Convention and other key international legal instruments and initiatives in this area, and the process of institutional building and interagency cooperation at all levels is underway.

Administrative service centres should become one of the key elements of the new system of interagency cooperation on preventing and combating domestic violence at the local level, in particular, in amalgamated territorial communities.

The trainers of the event were Yuliia Savelieva, PhD in Philosophy, and Mykhailo Horodok, President of the Ukrainian Association of Emotionally Focused Therapy. They acquainted the ASC employees with the basic concepts (gender and sex, gender roles, gender stereotypes, gender-based and domestic violence, etc.), international and national legislation on combating and preventing gender-based violence and domestic violence.

The participants also reviewed algorithms for helping a victim of domestic violence, psychological aspects of this work, etc. As a result of the seminar, all participants receive a state-standard advanced training certificate (0.2 ECTS).

It should be noted that the National Training Centre for Preventing and Combating Domestic Violence of the High School held a number of other events as part of the international campaign “16 Days Against Violence” aimed at improving the skills of public servants and representatives of local authorities in the field of combating and preventing gender-based violence. In particular, trainings were held for specialists from Ternopil, Zakarpattia, Kyiv and Kherson regions.