Ukraine at the Expo 2025 in Japan: The “Not For Sale” pavilion shows the price we pay for our values

At the World Expo 2025 in Japan, Ukraine presented its pavilion titled “Not For Sale”. It is dedicated to the core human values for which Ukrainians pay an extraordinarily high price every day.

This was discussed during a briefing at the Media Center Ukraine by Tetiana Berezhna, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.

“What do we want to convey with our pavilion? If we go back to the theme of the Expo – creating a future for our society – what is Ukraine’s contribution to this future society? With our pavilion we wanted to show the deepest essence: that future societies are built on values. Only then can they be sustainable, only then can they be successful. Values are the basis of everything. Without shared values, without common ground, there can be no cooperation, no partnerships. Values are the foundation,” she stressed.

Ukraine’s “Not For Sale” pavilion at the World Expo is designed as a store where nothing can be purchased. Instead of goods, it features 18 objects, each symbolizing a human value – freedom, dignity, resilience, and more. Each object has a barcode that visitors can scan with special store scanners installed in the pavilion. Instead of prices, they see video stories from Ukraine on the screen that metaphorically illustrate the price Ukrainians pay for the right to education, freedom of choice, access to healthcare, and other fundamental rights.

“In fact, the pavilion highlights the difference between value and price – or rather, it connects them: the price we pay to be a society of values. We thought it was a profound idea, but we had some concerns that we might not be understood. Still, we were understood even better than we expected. Because the people who approached and scanned the barcodes – adults, teenagers and children alike – were deeply moved. Some even cried,” Tetiana Berezhna noted.

She added that when the pavilion opened, the line to enter was so long that it extended to the pavilions of other countries.

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news