Bishop Victor: Ukrainians must control the work of Biarritz Partnership

Bishop Victor (Kotsaba). Photo: Bishop's Facebook page

Bishop Victor (Kotsaba), Chief of Staff of the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC, commented on Ukraine's accession to the Biarritz Partnership project. On his blog page “I am a Correspondent”, the bishop said that the Church shares the concern of the Ukrainian society about the advancement of gender equality, one of which being the “Partnership”.

The bishop noted that the documents of the Biarritz Partnership themselves only declare the desire to defend the rights of women, however, the gender-related narrative can be fraught with threats for society.

“With regard to gender, this concept is interpreted so differently in science, by individual NGOs, in documents of various organizations that one should understand in each individual case what the authors of a particular initiative want to achieve when they use the word ‘gender’ in their documentation,” wrote the UOC hierarch.

He noted that although the Biarritz Partnership is an initiative of private NGOs, united into the so-called Advisory Council for Gender Equality, this Council formulates principles that can drastically affect national legislation.

In this regard, the hierarch noted that “in his opinion, civil society should and can actively participate in defining the content of the work of the Biarritz Partnership”, since otherwise “the substantive part of the Biarritz Partnership will be formed without their participation and filled with the messages that other NGOs will come up with.”

“The challenges of our time should mobilize Ukrainian public and human rights organizations and active citizens, who are able to carry out such work, not to rely on state structures but persistently defend their rights within the framework of the international human rights mechanism, at the national and supranational levels, at least in the same way as this is done by private structures which initiated the creation of the Biarritz Partnership in their states,” the hierarch summed up.

As a reminder, on September 12, 2020, Ukraine received the official status of a participant in the Biarritz Partnership.

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