In November 2016, the Council of Europe Project “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine”, in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, completed a series of trainings on “The right of internally displaced persons to social protection: application of the Ukrainian legislation through the prism of European standards of human rights”, which were organized for the staff of local cities and district departments for social protection from Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
During the month of October and November 2016, close to 100 heads or deputy-heads of local cities and district departments for social protection from the Project’s focus regions took part in 4 trainings.
The representatives of local cities and district departments for social protection worked in small groups, discussed crucial issues related to the social protection of IDPs and to the juridical challenges in court concerning the protection of IDPs on the national level and in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights.
The participants gave positive comments on the training, shared information between themselves and discussed different ways they will apply the content of the training sessions in their working practices. They also stressed the preventive role played by these activities concerning job burnouts and that more training of this type will be needed in the future.
The Project plans to continue the implementation of such capacity building activities dedicated to relevant authorities and other key stakeholders to effectively protect the rights of IDPs.