ALI Held a Seminar on Principles and Practices of Gender-Sensitive Legislative Impact Assessment for the Verkhovna Rada

On August 29, 2024, the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, together with the Parliamentary Centre (Canada), held a seminar for representatives of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the principles and practices of “Gender-Sensitive Legislative Impact Assessment: Canadian Experience and Prospects for Implementation in Ukraine.”

First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Oleksandr Korniyenko opened the seminar and emphasised the importance of introducing such tools as legislative impact assessment and gender-sensitive analysis of draft laws into Ukrainian parliamentary practice:

“The principles of inclusiveness, equality and diversity should be taken into account when developing legislative initiatives. This is important both in the context of implementing the internal reform of the parliament and in fulfilling our European integration commitments. Therefore, the introduction of a gender-sensitive legislative impact assessment is one of the priority tasks for the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine today”
Oleksandr Korniyenko
First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine

Senior Project Manager at the Parliamentary Centre of Canada Anastasia Shtaltovna stressed that advocacy for gender equality is a constant priority for the Parliamentary Centre (Canada). She also thanked the ALI and the Verkhovna Rada for their ongoing cooperation in this area.

The event’s speakers were Oleksandr Zaslavskyy, Director of the analytical department at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, and Rick Stewart, Executive Director of the Regulatory Governance Initiative and Co-Director of the Regulatory Career Development Programme at the School of Public Policy and Management at Carleton University (Canada).

Rick Stewart spoke about the principles and practice of legislative impact assessment and gender analysis (GBA+). The participants also discussed with the speaker the prospects of implementing gender-sensitive impact assessment in the Verkhovna Rada:

“Gender-sensitive analysis is an important aspect of another tool of parliamentary practice — legislative impact assessment. The effective application of these mechanisms can actually work to create policies that provide equal access to services and opportunities. After all, comprehensively predicting and evaluating how different people look at information and changes provided by this or that law is the main value in these processes”
Rick Stewart
Executive Director of the Regulatory Governance Initiative and Co-Director of the Regulatory Career Development Programme at the School of Public Policy and Management at Carleton University (Canada)

Oleksandr Zaslavskyy told the participants of the training about the application of gender analysis through the experience of Ukraine and EU standards:

“Gender analysis is not a separate but a cross-cutting element in the decision-making system in Western democracies, which is an unconditional requirement of the European Union for Ukraine. Combined with legislative impact assessment, it makes it possible to determine how a particular decision may affect different people — and this requires the formation of a whole worldview in the decision-making process. I want to emphasise that these are not alien topics for the Ukrainian Parliament. In fact, one of the key activities of our project is piloting, adapting and institutionalising the gender-sensitive impact assessment methodology in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine”
Oleksandr Zaslavskyy
Director of the analytical department at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives

The event was held by “Parliamentary Accountability of the Security Sector in Ukraine” (PASS Ukraine), which the Agency implements together with the Parliamentary Centre in cooperation with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and with the support of Global Affairs Canada as part of Peace and Stabilization Operations Program (PSOPs).

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