Last Friday, on November 20, 2015, the 7th Annual Assembly of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership started in Kyiv.

Civil Society Forum (CSF) was launched in 2009 as the culmination of partner organizations network meeting of the Eastern Partnership. This key event is designed to highlight the achievements, failures, discuss, make recommendations not only globally but also regionally. The main purpose of the annual Forum is to build democratic relations between civil society in the EU and its partner countries. Ukraine is a partner country, in the line with Azerbaijan, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova.

The forum organizers aim to train partner organizations to build dialogue between the latter and the authorities through the exchange of experience, the recommendations and binding monitoring activities within multilateral platforms.

Forum seeks to create a social dialogue where each participant will be able to share own experience in the protection of fundamental freedoms, human rights and the principles of representative democracy. At the CSF, there was announced the principle of strengthening the accountability of public authorities with a parallel strengthening of the position of civil society.

This year, the Forum was attended by over 236 civil society organizations from more than 425 applications.
On Friday, the Forum was visited by Arsenij Yatsenyuk, who said:

“We do the work, despite all the difficulties. Because this work is not just for reforms, but to preserve the state of Ukraine. This work is the struggle for our independence and our future”

Each participant of the Forum was working in one of following groups:
1. Democracy, human rights, good governance and stability
2. Economic integration policy of rapprochement with the EU
3. Environment, climate change and energy security
4. Contacts between people
5. Social and labor policy and social dialogue

The Charitable fund “Progress” is a member of the network of the Eastern Partnership from 2014. The project coordinator of Human Rights Fund “Progress” Natalia Kozyr participated in the Forum.

The press center of the Charitable fund “Progress”