BackThe Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska, presenting the Special report on violations of human rights during the events that took place in Ukraine from 21 November 2013 till 22 February 2014, stated that it collected and analysed chronologically material received and accumulated by the Commissioner within proceedings opened on 30 November 2013 and made recommendations for elaboration of such rules and regulations which would render impossible recurrence of such violations in the future.
"The Office of the Ombudsman was the first government institution that two years ago decided to conduct ongoing independent external public monitoring of their activities. Our principle is to coordinate any action with representatives of civil society. These three months have shown the maximum efficiency of this model of work. Close cooperation with civil society allowed to react quickly and to solve specific problems that arose during these tumultuous three months in Ukraine", - Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska emphasized.
The Commissioner informed of measures that were also undertaken by the Commissioner and staff of the Office together with the public during protest actions in Ukraine. In particular, according to Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska, cooperation with the Association of Ukrainian monitors of observance of human rights in activity of law enforcement bodies (UMOHR) within the signed Memorandum was the most effective.
"In close cooperation with the Association UMOHR, "Euromaydan SOS" and many others we quickly verified the information that is disseminated, assisting to find missing, verifying each message of human rights violations ", - Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska noted.
The Commissioner also said that this collaboration later joined the Coordination Centre for legal assistance, the Memorandum was also signed with it. It permitted to quickly obtain information concerning each detainee.
According to the Ombudsman, cooperation with members of the public allowed to react to events, not only in Kyiv but also in regions. Thus, regional coordinators of the Commissioner for public relations in Cherkassy, Dnipropetrovsk regions actually functioned as representatives of the Commissioner, visiting detainees in pre-trial detention centres, hospitals, directly communicating with anyone.
"Help for each particular person was very important at this tragic time, yet we found a large number of system problems that require amendments in legislation, improvement of judicial practice, appropriate actions of the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Interior," – Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska emphasized.
As an example, the Ombudsman cited the lack of coordination of authorities, whose powers are issues of protection of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of the child, as the results of monitoring of the Commissioner of children's rights during the protests testified. All collected materials and data are collected in the submission of the Commissioner and sent to the Prime Minister of Ukraine.
"A National Institution for Human Rights has no right to establish the guilty, but finding offenses and sending them for appropriate investigation to the national judicial institutions, we can", Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska summarized.
Source: Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Ukraine
