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

The adoption of the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 (2000) and nine supporting UNSCRs widely known as the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda prompted stakeholders to analyse security and external affairs issues from a gender perspective. While much of the mainstream literature on the EU foreign and security policy has been silent about its role as a gender actor, feminist literature has largely focused on gender equality in the EU’s internal and enlargement policy. Only recently feminist scholarship has started to engage with the EU as a gender normative actor in its foreign policy (see Ansorg and Haastrup, 2018; Deiana and McDonagh, 2018; Guerrina, Chappell and Wright, 2018). This paper contributes to ongoing research 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 2019. 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 explosion of the conflict, 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. 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. The paper also uncovers factors, conditions and structures that can enhance institutional accountability and responsiveness of stakeholders.