Human Rights Defenders Urge the Government to Ensure Mandatory Participation in Development of the Action Plan on Implementation of the National Strategy in the Sphere of Human Rights

To:

Prime Minister of Ukraine

Yatsenyuk A. P.

Minister of Justice of Ukraine

Petrenko P. D.

Copied:

First Deputy

Minister of Justice of Ukraine

Sevostianova N. I.

Dear Arseniy Petrovych!

Dear Pavlo Dmytrovych!

On 25 August 2015 the President of Ukraine approved by Order No. 501/2015 the National Strategy in the Sphere of Human Rights and instructed the Cabinet of Ministers with involvement of representatives of state authorities, civil society institutes, leading Ukrainian scientists and international experts to approve the Action Plan on Implementation of the National Strategy in the Sphere of Human Rights within three months for the period until 2020.

On behalf of the undersigned public organisations, we would like to express our gratitude to the Ministry of Justice for organisation of activities of the Working Group on Development of the Action Plan on Implementation of the National Strategy in the Sphere of Human Rights. The joint development of the document by representatives of central executive authorities (hereafter – CEAs), international organisations and civil society, to our belief, turned an example of a synergy of efforts and working out new mechanisms in the sphere of human rights protection. Due to the established equality principle for all participants and unanimity in the procedures for proposals’ submission and comments, an example of fruitful cooperation between the state and the public sectors was demonstrated.

Still, unfortunately, representatives of many CEAs did not take an active part in development and approval of the purport. At this, all participants of the process had an opportunity to submit their comments or proposals to the draft Plan during its development.

In fact, on 21 October the work of all subgroups and the editorial group was completed. We hope that as a result of further stages of the agreement, required for approval of the Action Plan, there will be no content changes made in the working draft without agreement with respective working subgroups.

In light of the stated above and in order to take into account views of all parties, we request to ensure mandatory participation of civil society representatives in further development of the Action Plan text, in particular, we request to hold respective consultations and agreements before approval of the final draft of the document.

We hope that the Action Plan will become a sort of a roadmap for establishment of human rights in Ukraine and will not remain just a declaration, as, unfortunately, it happened to documents in the sphere of human rights before.

We rely on your support in consensus approval of the Action Plan and its implementation in future.

For further questions, please, contact – 050 34 11 388, [email protected], Iryna Dumych.

Best regards,

Oleksandra Matviichuk,

Chairperson of the Board at “Centre for Civil Liberties”,

Coordinator of “Euromaidan-SOS” initiative;

Oleksandr Horbatko,

Chief Coordinator-Director of the civil organisation “Donbass-SOS”;

Oleksandra Dvoretska,

Chairperson of the Board at the Charity Foundation “Vostok-SOS” (“East-SOS”);

Yuliia Halahan,

Coordinator of the project “Resource Centre for Internally Displaced Persons”;

Zorian Kis,

Co-Chairman of the Thematic subgroup No. 4 “Prevention and countering discrimination, gender equality” on the part of the civil society;

Oleksandr Halkin,

Director at the AUCF “Right to Protection”;

Tamila Tasheva,

Coordinator of the “Crimea-SOS” civil initiative;

Nataliia Hurzhii,

Chairperson of the Board at the charity organisation “Charity Fund Rokada”;

Tetiana Mazur,

Executive Director

at “Amnesty International Ukraine”;

Arkadii Bushchenko,

Executive Director of the “Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union”;

Oleksandr Pavlichenko,

Deputy Director at the “Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group”.