A three day conference of Ukrainian LGBT activists held near Kiev is over. Its organizers presented the report on activities of the Ukrainian Council of LGBT organizations. Its official registration has recently caused a hailstorm of protests.

Annual meetings-conferences for promotion of civil equality for LGBT people became a good tradition. Today's conference "Progress and innovations" was the 4th in a row and gathered 99 registered participants from the whole Ukraine.

"Up to now there are 34 LGBT organizations in Ukraine, about 20 NGOs that work with MSM and 25 informal LGBT unions - creative, sport, religious and others. Our movement grows bigger and becomes stronger, striking root in society", says Svyatoslav Sheremet, the leader of the National Ukrainian LGBT union - Gay Forum of Ukraine.

An extraordinary creative LGBT festival "Rainbow theme for You" took place in the fields of the conference. Artworks of LGBT people and gay themed works were presented for its guests and participants.

In the conference's framework took place the official meeting of the Ukrainian LGBT organizations' Council that has in its board 19 gay and lesbian unions from the country. Council's official registration made by the Ukrainian Justice Ministry on January 17, 2011 provoked more than 2000 appeals from homophobes to the president and the government with a demand to annul its registration. In this regard the representatives of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine were invited to this conference to supervise the law and order during its activities.

In general the conference's agenda was made on the basis of maximal information awareness combined with different working methods: plenary sessions were followed by sectional meetings, mini-trainings - with role-playing games, modeling problematic issues in LGBT movement. The core of the conference were its optional meetings and lessons on self-defense were of great interest among the audience.

The Final Resolution that has 18 actual recommendations on LGBT movement and MSM-services (such as the adoption in Ukraine of a complex non-discrimination legislation that would ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity; promotion of a concept of sexual and reproductive human rights; further expansion of financial and technical assistance of events dedicated to consolidation of LGBT community as a ground for an effective introduction of programs aimed at LGBT health-care and gay rights protection) was adopted at the end of the conference.

English translation presented by Yerdna Bananes