The United Nations Economic and Social Council elected Ukraine to the Executive Council of UN Women for 2022-2024, and also re-elected for a three-year term to the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the press service of Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Tuesday.
“The election of Ukraine to the governing body of UN Women was a confirmation of our state’s consistent adherence to the strategic course on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men at the national and international levels. As part of the Executive Council, the Ukrainian side will continue to strengthen women’s leadership and promote women’s participation in political processes, in particular in the context of implementation of the Women. Peace. Security,” Ukrainian diplomats report.
It is reported that the last time Ukraine was represented in the Executive Council of UN Women in 2011-2013.
“The main task of the Ukrainian membership in the Executive Board of UNDP, UNFPA, UNOPS will be to improve the efficiency of the operational activities of the UN development system, to provide assistance to member states for economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Foreign Ministry said.
They add that Ukraine is one of the thirty countries on whose territory major projects are being implemented with the support of the UN.
“Our state is especially interested in the UN operational activities being effective and result-oriented, eliminating duplication and avoiding gaps in the interaction of agencies in the host countries,” the message says.
It says that over the next few years, UN agencies in Ukraine will continue to provide assistance to the Ukrainian government in order to overcome the negative consequences in socio-economic sphere amid the spread of the coronavirus.
Other areas of enhanced interaction will be the development of democratic governance, sustainable economic growth, employment, green energy and modern technologies.
“These projects are being implemented within the framework of partnership between the government of Ukraine and the UN for 2018-2022 with a budget of $667 million,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) was established by UN General Assembly Resolution 64/289 on 2 July 2010.
The goal of UN Women is to accelerate the achievement of the UN goals in the field of gender equality and the empowerment of women, in particular by implementing policies, global standards and norms in this area, providing technical and financial assistance to member states in the implementation of these norms, strengthening effective partnerships with civil society and the like.
The Cabinet of Ministers at an extraordinary meeting on April 19 approved a project to attract a $ 100 million loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) for export-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), the Ministry of Finance said.
“Today, on April 19, 2021, the has government adopted a resolution on some issues of the implementation of the joint investment project with the IBRD on additional financing to counter COVID-19 within the framework of access to long-term financing, the Finance Ministry’s website said.
The additional financing project provides for a loan from the IBRD in the amount of $ 100 million to provide export-oriented SMEs with access to long-term financing, the ministry explained.
The Ministry of Finance notes an increase in demand from potential financial institutions participating in the project amid the coronavirus crisis.
At the same time, the government supported the draft presidential decree on the creation of a Ukrainian delegation to participate in negotiations with the IBRD and authorized the chairman of the board of Ukreximbank to sign the guarantee agreement between Ukraine and the IBRD, the Ministry of Finance said.
The world’s largest road travel marketplace BlaBlaCar has bought the Ukrainian automated bus passenger transport management company Octobus. According to a BlaBlaCar press release, Octobus is a cloud-based platform that enables bus carriers to automate their business processes, from sales and marketing to analytics, accounting and fleet management. It is expected that thanks to the joint efforts of Octobus and BlaBlaCar, bus carriers will receive key functionality that will help them to be competitive and increase the pace of development in the current market conditions. These include the ability to create own website and mobile application for online sales, as well as own call center for phone sales and a mobile application for drivers and staff.
The Octobus deal will allow BlaBlaCar to accelerate the digitalization of the bus market in Ukraine and scale it to countries where bus operators still sell most of their tickets offline at bus stations and ticket offices. In turn, BlaBlaCar users will have more choice for travel: carpooling in private cars or bus rides, the company said.
BlaBlaCar said that this decision was made for the platform as part of the overall development strategy.
“The Ukrainian bus market has great potential. Unlike European countries, the Ukrainian market consists of hundreds of bus operators. Many of them have their own business management system, which does not always meet the needs, since developing and maintaining such solutions is a rather expensive task. Carriers want to be engaged in transportation, not IT development. This is logical. At the same time, most of the companies, especially small ones, which still do business in Excel and even a notebook… We will offer carriers a technology with which they can provide an optimal online presence, optimize their business processes, focusing on the key tasks of their business, the quality of services provided for passengers and, as a result, increasing sales,” CEO of BlaBlaCar in Ukraine Oleksiy Lazorenko said.
In turn, the founder and CEO of Octobus, Ivan Kirov, added that for bus carriers the system will remain an independent tool for managing inventory and business processes, while existing BlaBlaCar partners will be able to use the service for free.
BlaBlaCar also announced raising a new EUR 97 million funding round. As the company said, the attracted investments will help maintain the current growth rates of the company, as well as develop the BlaBlaCar bus business, in particular in Ukraine. Among the company’s key objectives is to expand the network of bus partners and improve the platform to offer passengers a convenient and reliable way to buy tickets online.
BlaBlaCar is the world’s largest road travel marketplace (website and mobile app for iOS and Android) that brings together a trusted community of travel companions as well as official bus rides.
As of April 2021, the number of BlaBlaCar users exceeds 90 million in 22 countries.
Human rights activists from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have published an annual press freedom index, in which Ukraine ranked 97th, Deutsche Welle reports.
As noted in the message, Ukraine has dropped in this rating compared to last year by one position. With reference to the Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information (IMI), RSF reports more than 170 incidents of violence against media workers in 2020. In general, the situation in Ukraine is characterized in the human rights organization as “problematic”, which is the average of five possible assessments.
The organization’s website reports that the deterioration of the situation with freedom of the press in Ukraine, as in many other countries, was significantly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, RSF says that in the Ukrainian case, it is not about the consequences of the government’s offensive on freedom of speech, but about “the growth of social tension and the expression of hostility to the media”, which were fueled by the spread of the coronavirus and anti-epidemic measures. Human rights activists note that in Ukraine journalists were attacked by “irritated local businessmen and passers-by.”
The World Press Freedom Index 2021 ranking report was released on Tuesday, April 20, the message said.
The Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (Odesa), after the end of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, intends to resume work on the creation of branches in other countries, Director of the institute Natalia Pasechnikova has said.
“The demand for ophthalmological medical services is growing all over the world. The lack of highly qualified specialists has created the preconditions for the signing of memorandums on the establishment of branches of the institute in other countries [currently in China and Bulgaria]. Unfortunately, this issue is still difficult due to the pandemic. However, I hope that after humanity cope with the pandemic, we will be able to resume these projects,” she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Pasechnikova, the institute receives offers of cooperation and participation in global international research.
“We have signed agreements on cooperation with organizations and companies in Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, India, and Hawaii. We cooperate with Linköping University [Sweden] in the development of an artificial cornea; we participate in a global study conducted by the National Institute of Health [U.S.] in the field of research of hereditary ophthalmological diseases and the development of technologies for their diagnosis,” she said.
The introduction of vaccination passports, which would be mandatory for international travel, is not a close prospect, head of the National Technical Group of Experts on Immunoprophylaxis, Associate Professor of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fedir Lapiy said.
“Most likely, vaccination passports will not be introduced in the first half of 2021. This issue is only being discussed at the level of Europe, the United States and other countries, because apart from Israel and the Emirates, very few people are covered by widespread vaccination. Speaking about the United States, Germany, Great Britain and other countries, many people have not been vaccinated yet, so these are only discussions for now. This is not a very close prospect in fact,” he said during the online event entitled “Vaccination brings us closer,” dedicated to the current situation on vaccination in Ukraine, held with the support of the GSK Ukraine company on Tuesday.
Lapiy predicts that a decision at the level of individual states or at the global level regarding the so-called vaccination passports will not be made in the first half of 2021.
At the same time, he noted that at present in Ukraine, everyone who is currently being vaccinated against COVID-19 is entered into the electronic database.
“Ukraine is negotiating on the recognition of these electronic databases,” he said.
In turn, Deputy Director of the Department of Medical Services and Medicines of the National Health Service of Ukraine Hanna Fenchak, noted that the National Health Service of Ukraine is currently studying the possibility of combining information on vaccination from the e-health system with international databases.
“We are studying WHO’s requirements for the information that is downloaded from our unified e-health database to be accepted in other countries of the world,” she said.
