Svitlana Zalishchuk

Svitlana Zalishchuk was elected as a member of Ukrainian Parliament in October 2014. She is a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and the head of the Sub-Committee on European and Euro-Atlantic Relations.  Svitlana is a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She sits on the Committee of Anti-discrimination and Equality.

Svitlana’s current activities include foreign affairs and security, human rights, including anticorruption, with a focus on LGBT issues and gender equality. Svitlana was the first MP in Ukraine who publicly joined the LGBT pride movement in 2015. Svitlana was an active leader of the EuroMaidan movement that started in 2013. In particular, her organization, Centre UA, coordinated the biggest Facebook page (Euromaidan) in Ukrainian history, which played a critical role in the Revolution of Dignity.

Svitlana worked for 5 years as Executive Director of Centre UA, her Kiev-based non-governmental organization with a special focus on human rights, particularly anti-corruption. Svitlana was also the coordinator of number of influential civic campaigns in Ukraine, including the ‘Reanimation Package of Reforms’  (that after the Euromaidan events united more than 50 NGOs and experts to promote democratic reforms and policies).

Svitlana was a founder of CHESNO (Fair) movement that worked to bring transparency and accountability to Ukrainian politics. Additionally, in 2010, she was a co-initiator of the journalist movement, Stop Censorship!

In 2005-2006, Svitlana was a head of the Department of Information in the Administration of the President of Ukraine.

Svitlana graduated from Institute of Journalism, National Taras Shevchenko University. She was a fellow of the Stanford Draper Hill Summer Fellowship in 2011.