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.