“Support for implementing European standards relating to anti-discrimination and rights of national minorities in Ukraine” aims at supporting Ukraine in the earlier phases of EU accession negotiations, notably by following up on the 2022 Opinion on Ukraine's application for membership of the European Union. In this sense, the project’s mission is to align legislation and policy related to the protection from discrimination and rights of persons belonging to national minorities with European standards and to raise awareness, at the institution and societal levels, on combating intolerance and stereotypes against vulnerable groups. To support the implementation of the State Program "Unity in Diversity", the project plans to conduct mapping of the needs and the situation of national minorities and Roma in Ukraine. The project is thus in line with the National Strategy for Human Rights of Ukraine and its Action Plan 2021-2023; with the issues raised in the context of the EU/Ukraine Human Rights Dialogue and with the priorities under the recently adopted CoE/UA Action Plan “Resilience, Recover and Reconstruction” (2023-2026). The project started on 1 July 2023 and will be implemented until June 2026.

The project contains two main components: to support Ukrainian beneficiaries in analyzing the current legislation and policy in combating discrimination and hate crimes and identify gaps to align them with European standards and in implementing the legal framework on national minorities at central and local level, working with non-state actors, CSOs and minority communities. In this framework, project objectives could be summarized as follow:
- To support CSOs through 10 grants within both components, namely activities with the local authorities on national minorities and Roma; actions against discrimination; pilot activities in local schools on minority languages and bilingual education.
- To raise awareness, at the institution and societal levels, on issues related to diversity and combating intolerance and stereotypes against vulnerable groups, including in the context of the EU accession process.
- To better protect the rights of victims of discrimination and hatred,
those belonging to vulnerable groups within the minority communities.

In view of the project’s objectives abovementioned, the expected results could be summarized as follow:
- Increase capacities of Institutions, including Ombudsperson's Office staff in Ukraine, to address discrimination and hate crime at legal and policy level, in line with the EU acquis and other European standards and the ECtHR case law.
- Ensure that law and policies relating the rights of persons belonging to national minorities are in line with the EU acquis and other European standards.
- Raise awareness of tolerance and non-discrimination standards at public level.