Legal Hundred: Inclusion of women veterans in the Veterans Policy Strategy
The combination of analytical tools and practical experience in helping women veterans, veterans and their families helps the Yurydychna Sotnia to influence the updating of veteran policy, taking into account the real needs of different groups. With the support of the UWF, the think tank has prepared a number of materials that form a new vision of such a policy – using a gender approach.
In January-March 2024, the Yurydychna Sotnia NGO, with the support of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, conducted an analytical study “Social Protection of Female and Male Veterans, Analysis of Existing Standards, Review of European Practices and Development of Recommendations”.
This study focused on the current legislation and bylaws on the rights and guarantees for female and male veterans, taking into account a gender-sensitive approach.
There are few gender-sensitive components in the relevant national legislation, but they do exist and need to be taken into account. The point is that all medical, psychological guarantees and material support should be provided with due regard to the gender characteristics of women and men. The study highlighted the need to implement a single comprehensive policy for female and male veterans in matters of social protection, including payments, educational benefits, etc. This is always of great value for returning to peaceful life. There were also certain recommendations related to housing, labour and medical guarantees,” says Maria Zvyagintseva, a lawyer at the Yurydychna Sotnia NGO.
Research as a result of analytical and advocacy work
According to the lawyer, housing issues are among those most in need of updating. The reason for this is the outdated Housing Code of Ukraine, so the policy in this area needs to be updated.
This study was the result of the analytical and advocacy work of the Yurydychna Sotnia NGO. It became one of the sources for the development of unified standards of veteran policy within the framework of the Concept of Support for Veterans and Their Families. Subsequently, some of these materials on guarantees for female and male veterans were included in the Veterans’ Policy Strategy for the period up to 2030, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers.
The Strategy refers to the accessibility of medical programmes, memorialisation activities, and social support mechanisms that should take into account individual needs. But the document is a basic, visionary one. For implementation, it is necessary to detail the provisions in laws and bylaws. It is about creating convenient mechanisms for accessing guarantees according to the individual needs of a female or male veteran – for example, through digital services, without unnecessary bureaucracy. So far, there are few such solutions, some are still being developed,” explains Zvyagintseva.
For its part, the Juridical Hundred participates in the development of regulatory changes, both upon request and on its own initiative.
At the moment, we have to talk about the declarative nature of the relevant law and the discrepancy with some of the visionary goals already envisaged in the Strategy. After all, the Law on the Status of Veterans was adopted back in 1993 and does not objectively take into account the current challenges, in response to which the Strategy was developed, which is designed to last until 2030,” says the lawyer.
The Yurydychna Sotnia NGO actively defends the rights of military personnel and veterans and conducts high-quality analytical work. This has been acknowledged by government agencies – not only by inviting the organisation’s experts to specialised working groups and subcommittees of the Verkhovna Rada, but also by official letters of thanks.
Protecting the rights of families of prisoners and missing persons
Another analytical report, developed with the support of the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, concerned the realisation of the rights of a person who lived in a de facto marriage with a missing or captured serviceman. It was based on calls to the hotline.
The most common problems include the lack of payments, difficulties in recognising the fact of residence, and limited access to information. Some of these problems are actually addressed by law. For example, how and to whom information about a missing person or a prisoner of war is provided. But often people do not know this precisely because of the lack of communication with the authorised body on the ground. This initial stage is very important. Therefore, where there were any regulatory gaps in the mechanism of action, we first of all focused on the action of this mechanism for people, on what needs to be done, where to go to achieve some result. And if we saw a certain regulatory problem arise, we offered our view on how to solve it. This report is a combination of analytics and practice, because it was based on the problems that were most often voiced to us by people who were in actual marriage relationships or family members at some certain stage,” says Maria Zvyagintseva.
Protecting the rights of families of prisoners and missing persons is currently one of the organisation’s priorities.
These issues are the focus of our analytics, advocacy and legal assistance. We provide both primary and secondary legal support. For example, many of the requests relate to the recognition of a de facto marriage or the receipt of a one-off financial assistance,” adds lawyer Maria Zvyagintseva.
The experience of the Legal Hundred shows how in-depth analytics and a focus on people can change the approach of the state. The organisation not only develops solutions, but also helps people get protection right now.
The material was prepared within the framework of the project “Gender Think Tank Network: Strengthening Capacity for Advanced Policy Development, Impact Assessment, Strategic Advocacy and Focused Policy Communications”, implemented by the Ukrainian Women’s Fund with the support of the European Union. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the UWF.
