Promoting Gender Equality and the WPS Agenda in a Conflict-Affected Country: the Case of the European Union in Ukraine

This paper contributes to ongoing research on the EU as a gender actor, and provides important illustrations of how the EU and its Member States have operationalized gender equality principles and the WPS agenda in Ukraine in the period from 2015 to 2021 and from 2022 to 2024. The EU and its Member States have a strategic interest and a large programme in Ukraine that includes promoting EU values. Following the ratification of the Association Agreement (AA) and the conflict outbreak, the country has benefitted from both the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP) and European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) financing. With the support of international organisations and EU funding the country has made progress in its legal and policy framework on gender equality, has adopted a national action plan on WPS and has started a democratisation and reform process in line with the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Following the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Ukraine’s accession process to the European Union, the EU’s strategy has changed and expanded significantly. The gender dimension has also become more prominent within the EU’s expanded strategy. The paper illustrates how domestic actors understand gender and respond to the application of emancipatory feminist knowledge to democratization efforts of international actors like the EU and its Member States. Through a critical frame analysis of documents along with 13 semi-structured interviews of relevant national and international actors, the research uncovers the approaches used to disseminate and implement gender equality principles and the WPS agenda in Ukraine.