Within the component on “Support to the police reform and fighting against ill-treatment and impunity” the project is assisting Ukrainian authorities by providing expertise in the course of the police reform, ensuring compliance of the legislative and regulatory frameworks with European standards. Thus, starting from April 2015 the project closely cooperates with the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine providing on their request legal consultations on the draft law “On National Police” to further improve and bring it to a higher degree of compliance with the best European standards and practices before its submission to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and later to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. For the time being under the request of the Law Enforcement Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the project has prepared the legal opinion on two draft laws in one document bearing in mind their interrelated character – the Draft Law “On Internal Affairs Bodies” and the Draft Law “On National Police”. The primary basis for the review is European standards, in particular human rights norms.
Within the component on “Strengthening the Ombudsperson’s Office operational capacities in Ukraine (ill-treatment, non-discrimination and data-protection)” the project started a series of 2-days trainings on antidiscrimination issue for the staff and regional representatives of the Office of Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine to provide them with the full package of profound knowledge on the issue. The training covered wide range of antidiscrimination issues starting from the general overview of discrimination, forms and grounds of discrimination, methodology of discrimination identification and monitoring, and finishing with consideration of the most crucial for Ukraine and requested topics as discrimination in employment, discrimination of displaced persons, discrimination based on grounds of sex, age and disability, domestic violence as a type of discrimination. All trainings are focused on the European standards of antidiscrimination with the special accent made on practical application of the HELP programme distance learning course “On Antidiscrimination” as a key source of information for those professionals specialised on antidiscrimination issues.
Under assistance of the Project the representatives of the Ombudsman Office responsible for implementation of the antidiscrimination policy participated in the annual seminar organised by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) that was held on 28-29 May 2015 in Strasbourg and was devoted to the specialised bodies' role in addressing underreporting of discrimination and hate crime. The seminar's objectives was to ascertain the contribution that specialised bodies can make to overcoming barriers to the reporting of discrimination and hate crime and to exchange examples of good practices of co-operation between these bodies, civil society, local authorities, the judiciary and the police in this connection.
Within the component on “Implementation of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)” the project is in the process of finalization of its work over elaboration of two HELP distance learning courses for legal professionals: 1) Pre-trial Investigation in the Light of the ECHR and Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights; and 2) Deliberate Ill-treatment in the Light of ECHR. The courses will be implemented into the training curriculum of the National training institutions for legal professionals starting from September –October 2015.
In May 2015 the Project in cooperation with other International organisations supported the National School of Judges in organisations of the special two-weeks training for judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. The training has become a platform for exchange of knew knowledge and thoughts, ideas and experience between Supreme Court judges and prominent European as well as National experts, scientists, acting judges and lawyers. The CoE experts, namely Mr Paul Lemmens, judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECTtHR) from Belgium talked about the role of Supreme Court in implementation of the ECHR and execution of ECtHR judgments and Mr Pavlo Pushkar, Senior lawyer from the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights made a presentation devoted to the hierarchy of the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and methodological aspects with regard establishment, finding and application of the most relevant case-law of the Strasbourg Court.