On 30 April 2020, the Council of Europe, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation in co-operation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation closed in an online event the project “Co-operation on the implementation of the Russian Federation National Action Strategy for Women (2017-2022)”. The project has run from November 2018 to May 2020.

The project has been co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe. It focused on developing knowledge and skills in two areas of the Russian National Action Strategy for Women (2017–2022): preventing social disadvantage of women and violence against women and fostering women’s participation in public and political life.

The online closing event presented the achievements of the project through a video presentation and assessed its main outputs – research studies, publications, training sessions for media and technical meetings with state officials, etc. The winners of the journalists’ competition held under the project to raise awareness of problems faced by present-day women were also announced.

The Russian side was represented by Alexey VOVCHENKO, First Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Protection, Tatiana MOSKALKOVA, High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Alexander SAMARIN, Deputy Head of the European Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

The Council of Europe was represented by Claudia LUCIANI, Director of Human Dignity, Equality and Governance, Verena TAYLOR, Director of Office of the Directorate General of Programmes, and Petr SICH, Head of the Programme Office of the Council of Europe in the Russian Federation.

The European Union was represented by Markus EDERER, European Union Ambassador to the Russian Federation.