ADDRESS BY CHAIRMAN OF THE VERKHOVNA RADA OF UKRAINE
H.E. MR. OLEKSANDR MOROZ AT THE CONFERENCE IN MADRID

27 November 2006

Dear friends,

The Pan-European Campaign to combat violence against women, including domestic violence is also of a paramount importance to Ukraine. The Parliament attaches the foremost attention to this topic in parallel with the gender policy implementation.

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine held the hearings on the mentioned subject. We defined mainstream directions for neutralizing such reprehensible phenomenon in economic, social as well as criminal aspects. It is obvious that falling behind with the gender policy implementation is not the only root cause of these misfortunes within Ukrainian society.

Practical implementation of such policy is extremely important since wider representation of women in power, particularly at the local level, in the Parliament and the Government would have a certain influence on containing this occurrence.

We believe the underlying cause is the high level of unemployment and unsettled state of women both socially and economically. Families are also unsettled. It brings about a number of by-side effects such as alcohol addiction, smoking, drug abuse etc., which constitute grave problems to the status of women.

Neutralizing these causes will enable to practically address the concern of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly regarding the protection of women.

We believe that fulfilling political reform, strengthening the role and functions of the local self government, introducing the European model of governance in Ukraine will provide an opportunity to resolve women’s problems in a better way. The state protection, granting asylum to the victimized, correction of men’s behavior who perpetrate violence to women can be carried out at the local level, when the local authorities have relevant governing levers and when women’s representation will grow in number.

I trust the attention attributed to this issue by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and the whole European Communities is topical and meet not only the interests of women. It meets the interests of the betterment of society not just in Europe but the world over, and for us it is highly important it relates to Ukraine.