November 25-26, 2021
Kyiv – Berlin (teleconference and online)

The International Forum on Eastern Ukraine is the annual conference of the international civil society platform CivilMPlus. The forum brings together representatives of NGOs and authorities, diplomats, international experts, activists, and young people. All participants are united by their desire to contribute to the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict in the Donbas, to promote sustainable peace, justice and safe reintegration, and to contribute to the development of the region and the country.

For the first time, the Forum will be held in the format of a teleconference between Kyiv and Berlin. There will be offline venues in the two capitals for speakers and guests.  For those who will not be able to attend in person, including due to pandemic restrictions, an online broadcast will be organized.

The CivilMPlus platform holds this Forum in partnership with the UN in Ukraine.

The theme of the Forum is “Conflict Resolution in the Donbas as an Intergenerational Task: Promoting Justice, Dialogue, and Reconciliation”. Current issues related to political negotiations, transitional justice, support, and rebuilding connections across the contact line will be examined from the perspectives of different generations affected by the war.

Today’s 20-year-old Ukrainians were 12 years old when, as a result of Russia’s aggression, Ukraine lost control of the certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The war has been a reality of most of their conscious lives. The 30-year-old peers of independent Ukraine today hold positions in various spheres and make decisions on a par with the fourty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-olds who lived most of their lives in the USSR and remember it well. In eastern Ukraine, in the war zone, there are many elderly people for whom the current war experience is their second one already. How do these different experiences and perspectives affect perceptions of the conflict and aspirations for peace; what consequences of this generational divide should be important to consider for politicians, officials, activists, and the international partners of Ukraine?

Three panel discussions on the first day of the Forum and more than a dozen roundtables on the second day will focus on different aspects related to the armed conflict and ways to resolve it (see the preliminary program of the Forum). One way or another, speakers and participants will look at the possibilities to overcome conflict through the lens of generations and seek answers to the following questions:

• How can we motivate the younger generation to remain committed to conflict resolution and participate in peacemaking?
• What will be the strategic response of civil society to the increasingly protracted conflict and to the possibility that its resolution will be a task of more than one generation?
• What knowledge can the first generation of civilian peacemakers in the Donbas pass on to the next one? What measures can be used again and what needs to be changed?

The Forum will present findings of the research on the role of different generations in conflict and peacemaking, as well as of the impact of the war on young people, the mature and the elderly. The research was initiated in October 2021 by the CivilMPlus platform with the involvement of representatives of independent civil society from Ukraine, Germany, Lithuania, Russia, USA, and France.

The Forum will result in a publication with key messages, observations and recommendations made during the panel discussions and roundtables.

The Forum is organized with the financial support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

First day of the Forum, 25.11. 2021

KYIV: Registration for in-person/offline participation in Kyiv is closed. 

BERLIN: Colleagues and partners who are based in Berlin can register for in-person participation https://bit.ly/3bDRJ06. In Berlin, the Forum takes place at the CLB Berlin, Prinzenstrasse 84.2, Moritzplatz.

ONLINE: The opening ceremony and panel discussions of the first day of the Forum will be available at Zoom (open webinar) – https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83823948060?pwd=OUs1NVZSd21DMXo2YVBpWUppSWRuUT09

Passcode: 749523

There will also be a live stream on the CivilMPlus Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/civilmplus. Look for the stream in Ukrainian, English and Russian.   

Second day of the Forum, 26.11. 2021

Online stream of the round tables will be available, with few exceptions. Please, consult the programme for the themes and the links. 

Kyiv – Berlin | 25-26 November 2021

Кyiv: President Hotel, Hospitalna Street, 12
Berlin: CLB Berlin, Prinzenstrasse 84.2

Day 1 | 25 November | 09:00 – 19:00 (EET)

KYIV: 09:00 – 11:00 (Kyiv time – EET) Obligatory free COVID-19 testing, registration and welcome coffee
BERLIN: 09:00 – 10:00 (Berlin time – CET) registration and welcome coffee

11:00 – 11:30(EET) Opening ceremony

Ms. Oleksandra Matviychuk, Chairperson of the Board of the Center for Civil Liberties, member of the CivilMPlus Coordination Council
Ms Iryna Vereshchuk, vice-prime-minister – minister for reintegration of temporarily occupied territories (tbc)
H.E. Ms. Anka Feldhusen, Ambassador of Germany to Ukraine
Ms. Osnat Lubrani, UN Resident Coordinator, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine
H.E. Mr. Tobias Thyberg, Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine
Ms. Daria Kuznetsova, internally displaced person from Donetsk

11:30 – 13:00 Panel I. Reviving political peace process: Normandy 2.0 or new approaches?

Mr. Dmytro Kuleba, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine tbc. Ukrainian perspective with a view to unblock the Normandy format and to reinforce international support to Ukraine (tbc)
Mr. Matthias Luttenberg, Commissioner for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Germany, tbc. German perspective of the Ukrainian question after the elections and political changes in Germany (tbc)
H.E. Mr. Etienne de Poncins, France’s Ambassador to Ukraine. French and broader EU perspective of the potential to continue providing support to Ukraine with regards to political peace process, economic development, etc.
H.E. Mr. Yaşar Halit Çevik, Ambassador, Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine. The role of the OSCE in the political peace process to the crisis in and around Ukraine: mandate, challenges, and perspectives
Mr. Petras Auštrevičius or Mr. Andrius Kubilius, members of the European Parliament (Lithuania) tbc. Discussing the current role of the EU in the conflict resolution and its potential in the future, against the background of the internal issues and many other external challenges and priorities
Ms. Oleksandra Matviychuk, Chairperson of the Board of the Center for Civil Liberties. Presentation of a strategy and roadmaps for the effective participation of civil society in the peace process

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 14:30 Presenting the results of a survey of the Women’s Initiatives for Peace in Donbas “Amnesty as an instrument to achieve sustainable peace? Opinions of people on both sides of the contact line”

Cecile Druey, Senior Researcher, Historical Institute, University of Bern (Switzerland)
Valentina Cherevatenko, Chairperson of the Coordination Council of the Union of Women of the Don (Russia)
Iuliia Kaplan, analyst of the Think Tank Donbas, Analytical center (Ukraine)

14:30 – 16:00 Panel II. Transitional Justice: key challenges in Ukraine

Oleksandr Pavlichenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Deputy Chairperson of the working group on reintegration of the Commission on Legal Reform under the President of Ukraine. Ukraine’s use of international protection mechanisms to renew the rights of victims of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine
Matilda Bogner, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. International experience and recommendations
Ihor Yaremenko, Deputy Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine. Ensuring the rights of victims of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict (tbс)
Simon Papuashvili, Programme Director, International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR). Can the International Criminal Court contribute to closing the impunity gap for international crimes in Ukraine? – Challenges and opportunities.
Nataliya Gumenyuk, journalist, writer, co-founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab. Effective communication of the transitional justice process

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee-break

 16:30 – 18:30 Panel III. Living together in united Ukraine: how to overcome prejudices, fakes and algorithms

Stan Veitsman, UN Peace & Development Advisor, Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Ukraine. Peace is not just the absence of war (tbc)

in Kyiv, Andriy Dikhtyarenko, journalist

in Berlin, Nikolaus von Twickel, journalist, expert on Eastern Europe

What one needs to know about life in the temporarily occupied territories in eastern Ukraine for reintegration at the political and social levels.

Ilya Nuzov, FIDH, Head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Lecturer at the Institute for Political Studies (France). The experience of truth and reconciliation commissions: what of the world experience can Ukraine use?
Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) Expert. Peacebuilding in social networks: How to make peace in a space where algorithms control rule over?
Oleksii Bida, the head of the Center for Documentation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. Civil society initiatives of Ukraine to establish historical truth: value and challenges (“History of one town”)

18:30 – 19:00 Informal opening of the exhibition “(Not)WAR: the awareness of oneself and boundaries in the ‘Donbas Diaries’ dialogues”

Day 2 | 26 November | 10:00 – 17:00 (EET)

Different programme in Kyiv and in Berlin

KYIV

09:00 – 10:00 (Kyiv time – EET) Obligatory free COVID-19 testing, registration and welcome coffee

10:00 – 11:30 In parallel, round tables will be held by member-organizations of the CivilMPlus:

1) Youth and peacekeeping. Best practices at the international, national and local levels. (NGO “Country of Free People”).
2) Monitoring and documentation as the basis of the policy of overcoming the consequences of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
3) Residents of the temporarily occupied territories in eastern Ukraine: can we be allies in the reintegration process? (NGO “Ideas for Change”).

11:30 – 12:00  – Coffee-break

12:00 – 13:30 In parallel, round tables will be held by member-organizations of the CivilMPlus:

1) “80 days around the world”: crossing the contact line and the work of the check-points (NGO “Ideas for Change”).
2) Grave Human Rights Violations in Eastern Ukraine: National and International Prosecution Mechanisms (Truth Hounds, IPHR).
3) Participation of different generations in regional development in communities run by military-civil administrations. The experience of Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine (civil society center “Drukarnia”, NGO “Age of Happiness”).

13:30 – 14:30 – Lunch break

14:30 – 16:00 In parallel, round tables will be held by member-organizations of the CivilMPlus:

1) Historical truth: overcoming traumas, borders, consequences of armed conflict (Caritas Ukraine, Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union).
2) Poland’s 2022 Chairmanship in the OSCE. Advocating the release of persons detained in connection with armed conflict (Center for Civil Liberties).

BERLIN

09:00 – 10:00 (Berlin time, CET) registration and welcome coffee

10:00 – 12:00 Round table: International efforts for conflict resolution in eastern Ukraine: Prospects for Advancing Peace Talks (the Secretariat of the CivilMplus).

12:00 – 12:45 – Coffee-break

12:45 – 14:15 Round table: How the Kremlin Ensures its Influence on Conflict in Eastern Ukraine: Attitudes in Russia and Enablers in the West (the Secretariat of the CivilMplus).

14:15 – 14:45 – Coffee-break

14:45 – 16:15 Round table (continuation): How the Kremlin Ensures its Influence on Conflict in Eastern Ukraine: Attitudes in Russia and Enablers in the West (the Secretariat of the CivilMplus).