On 15 September 2016 in Kyiv the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine with the support of the Council of Europe Project “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine” organized a round table «Addressing the issues of social protection of internally displaced persons: national practice and European experience». The meeting was opened by Andriy Yanchenko, Deputy Head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration and Ganna Khrystova, Senior Project Officer.

During the meeting the issues of legislation amendments on registration of internally displaced persons, questions of assignment and restoring  reinstatement of social payments after suspension, employment of IDPs and other regional challenges of responses on their needs were discussed. Also the practice of the European Court of Human Rights regarding pensions and social payments was highlighted.

Representatives of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, Heads of district and regional departments of social protection from Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, experts of the Project of the Council of Europe took part in discussions on the difficulties which specialists of social protection departments face at the local level.

As a result of the round table, it was agreed that there is a need of providing trainings for Heads of local (rayon level) Departments of social protection from Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Luhansk regions during October 2016.

These trainings will help raise awareness of participants on European standards on social rights of IDPs, improving the use of existing legislation in the part of providing of social protection of IDPs. The program of the trainings will also take into account regional peculiarities and prevention of specialists’ burnouts.