Advocacy
A significant part of Insight NGO’s work is aimed at strategic and systemic changes to Ukrainian legislation to effectively protect the rights of LGBTQI+ people, as well as survivors of domestic and gender-based violence.
We work consistently to eliminate all forms of discrimination and stigmatization, counter hate crimes, reform legislation, and achieve full equality of rights for the LGBTQI+ community in Ukraine.
Our priorities:
- Enshrining equal rights for families in law: introducing registered civil partnerships and achieving marriage equality.
- Protecting parenthood and custody: securing the right of same-sex families to adopt children and the ability to obtain custody of a partner’s biological children.
- Countering hate speech and hate crimes: criminalizing bias-motivated offenses on the grounds of SOGI and introducing effective liability for them.
- Rights of transgender and non-binary people: simplifying the legal gender recognition procedure and achieving its full depathologization.
- Rights of LGBTQI+ service members: advocating for adequate social, medical, and legal protection for defenders and their families.
- Protection from violence: monitoring and advocating for the proper implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine.
What we do to achieve this:
- We litigate strategic court cases. We analyze and support precedent-setting cases in national courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Strategic litigation not only protects a specific person but also exposes systemic gaps in the law, brings them public attention, and creates pressure on state bodies to change law enforcement practice.
- We engage with state authorities. We take an active part in working groups and expert councils at ministries and agencies (the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Social Policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ombudsman’s Office).
- We work with parliament. We cooperate with members of parliament from different factions to draft, promote, and provide expert assessments of human rights bills.
- We carry out international advocacy. We advocate for the rights of LGBTQI+ people in the context of Ukraine’s European integration. We prepare alternative (shadow) reports for international institutions (the UN, the Council of Europe, the EU, the OSCE) and engage the support of the international human rights community.
- We conduct analytical research. We build the evidence base: we monitor human rights violations, analyze court practice, and prepare analytical documents that make the case for change.
- We organize public and information campaigns. We initiate petitions and run public actions and media advocacy campaigns to draw the attention of society and the state to critical equality issues.
