Daria Zymenko combines art and activism in her work. In her creative projects, Daria explores personal and socially significant topics, including sexual violence and its consequences. She is also a member of the NGO “SEMA Ukraine”, which brings together women who have experienced sexual violence in captivity or during the occupation, a speaker, and participates in conferences and advocacy events.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is set to begin its fourth year, more than 1.7 million women and girls remain internally displaced throughout the country, according to IOM data. The war has been devastating for all the 3.7 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine – and also imposes gender-specific burdens on women and girls.

The educational program “Dream and Achieve” announces the start of applications. The program is aimed at supporting Ukrainian women affected by the full-scale Russian invasion. Participation in the program provides an opportunity to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to create or develop an online business, as well as financial support in the amount of $1,000 upon completion of the program.

For the first 50 days, I was kept in a torture chamber in Izolyatsia prison,” shared Liudmila Huseynova. “In this place, you become a person without rights. From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., you stand with a sack covering your head, and your hands in cuffs. You can get beaten for no reason. Your blood freezes as you hear the screams from others held in captivity, thinking maybe you’ll be next.”

The UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia and the UNFPA Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, together with the European Union (EU), started the Phase II of the regional programme “EU 4 Gender Equality: Together against gender stereotypes and gender-based violence”. The programme aims to reduce gender discriminatory attitudes and practices between women and men in institutional and community spheres, including unpaid domestic and care work in six Eastern Partnership countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine.

This opinion was expressed by Sabine Freizer Gunes, UN Women Representative in Ukraine. She believes that attention to gender equality issues in Ukraine helped the country to respond promptly to the problem of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and to counter it.

Lviv, 27 October 2023 – UN Women facilitated the Women’s Entrepreneurship Satellite Expo 2023 bringing together over 150 participants, particularly established women entrepreneurs from across Ukraine, who are seeking professional growth, as well as self-employed women and women employees seeking new opportunities and collaborations with private companies.

Yuliya Savynska is a 32-year-old confectioner and entrepreneur from eastern Ukraine who, like millions of other Ukrainians, was forced to leave her home and lost her business due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Julia Pysmenna is the founder of the online platform taker | maker, a web-service that brings together different professionals offering digital content creation on demand for small and medium-sized businesses. Based in Ukraine, the company helps its customers to create photos, videos, text and design for social media, blogs and websites through a database of over 120 high-quality content creators, as well as digital marketers, social media marketing managers and content producers. Pysmenna is one of the women entrepreneurs that have been selected to participate in the Women’s Entrepreneurship EXPO mentorship programme.

Oleksandra Matviychuk is a human rights activist from Ukraine. Following the “Maidan” demonstrations in November 2013, which led to the ousting of the Government and left many casualties among activists, she created the Euromaidan SOS Facebook page. As head of the Centre for Civil Liberties, she also provided legal assistance to protesters victimized during the crackdown. Together with her team, Matviychuk has documented over 18,000 reported war crimes against the Ukrainian people since 2014. The Centre for Civil Liberties won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Anna Zavertaylo is co-owner of a bakery and a café volunteering to support local people in Kyiv during the Russian invasion.

From 21–22 November, a two-day Women’s Economic Empowerment Congress (WEE Congress) convened more than 100 Ukrainian businesswomen, representatives of the private and public sectors, as well as academics, both in-person in Lviv and broadcast online.

Larysa Denysenko is a journalist, attorney, human rights activist and co-founder of the Association of Women’s Lawyers of Ukraine “JurFem”. Before the war, Denysenko and JurFem mainly advocated for women’s leadership in legal professions, provided mentorship and supported strategic court cases related to domestic violence and gender-based discrimination. Now, this has extended to representing the interests of those who have survived conflict-related sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by the Russian military in Ukraine.

The HeForShe University Tour has kicked-off in Ukraine in September and has sparked a lively debate among students and staff of Ukrainian universities on gender equality, with a focus on stereotypes and discrimination on campus.