Maria Dmytriyeva

Maria Dmytriyeva  is  a long-time women’s rights activist and national gender expert with the Democracy Development Center, an NGO that works on the development of civil society and state of law in Ukraine.

Maria remained in Ukraine after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, turning her focus to connecting foreign and Ukrainian women’s initiatives to provide humanitarian relief efforts.

Based in Kyiv, Maria has worked as an expert with various governmental commissions and public councils under government ministries of Ukraine and currently leads the Women Peace and Security (WPS) section of the Public Council under the Parliamentary Inter-Faction Equal Rights Caucus.

In recent years at the Democracy Development Center, she has conducted training on local application of UN Security Council resolution1325 on WPS for local activists and authorities in Donetska, Luhanska, and Zaporizka oblasts. She also lectured on WPS to media and press officers of central bodies of executive power of Ukraine with the Ukrainian TV, Radio, and Press Institute. She participated in development of Ukraine’s latest, second, National Action Plan to implement the WPS agenda.

The training work was done with the Charitable Foundation ‘Unity for the Future’ (Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine). The Center and the Foundation are partners of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Maria studied gender linguistics in Cal State Northridge.