The Vilnius Task Force: advocacy and dialogue platform
Published: Jan 28, 2022 Reading time: 2 minutes Share: Share an articleThe Vilnius Task Force is an advocacy and dialogue platform that aims to promote cooperation between local and national authorities, civil society and international organisations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and supports the active participation of communities in local policy-making and development through mechanism of participatory democracy. The platform regularly provides financial and mentoring support to civil society organisations (CSOs) if their projects and ideas are aimed at solving problems in the communities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions by strengthening communication between citizens and local authorities.
The VTF consists of representatives of civil society (non-governmental organisations, initiative groups and activists), local authorities (local self-government and civil-and-military administrations), as well as relevant ministries and parliamentary committees.
In 2020, the National Coordinating Committee of the VTF was formed by the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories of Ukraine, the UN Resident Coordinator Office in Ukraine, The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, ACCESS Consortium (People in Need, ACTED/ REACH, Medicos del Mundo, HelpAge International and Right to Protection) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.
The Vilnius Task Force has been operating during 2021, and during this period the following documents were developed:
- Prioritisation framework that maps the difficulties citizens face in participating in local policy-making in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and proposes ways to address the identified challenges
- Study Rural IDP women’s participation in community life in government-controlled areas of Luhansk region
- Policy brief “Key considerations on decentralization and related reforms in Luhansk and Donetsk regions”, presented during a side event of the Conference on Reforms in Ukraine in cooperation with the Reanimation Package of Reform
Representatives of local authorities from Donetsk and Luhansk regions regularly participated in advocacy activities at the national level to discuss local issues, for example, during the Q&A Session with Ukrainian and international leaders on the future of eastern Ukraine (May 2021) and the Round table on the state of observance of human and civil rights and freedoms along the contact line (April 2021).