COMMITTEE ON ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION CONSIDERS REPORT OF UKRAINE
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has considered the seventeenth and eighteenth periodic reports of Ukraine on the country’s implementation of the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Presenting the report, Sergii Rudyk, Head of the State Committee on National Citizenship of Ukraine, said that in March 2006, democratic national and local elections had been held, which had been confirmed to be free and fair by independent international monitors. As a result of political restructuring, a strategic document had been signed by Parliament, which included a provision allowing all citizens to use their languages of national origin and to promote their use in public life, in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. There were about 250,000 Crimean Tatars living today in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Ukrainian Government had adopted a programme for the settlement and installation of deported Crimean Tatars and persons of other nationalities who had returned to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as permanent residents, with a view to addressing socio-economic, cultural and educational problems related to their return.
In preliminary concluding remarks, Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, the Committee Expert who served as country Rapporteur for Ukraine, said he appreciated the inclusion of members of the Ombudsman’s office in the delegation and welcomed their statements, though he would still appreciate more information with regard to the independence of that office following the recent elections. He noted with interest the information provided by the delegation on the education of the Tatars and the Roma. He also noted that there were no prosecutions under way regarding discrimination against the Roma. In that connection, he reminded Ukraine that that did not mean that no such cases existed, and it might be that the Roma were simply not lodging complaints. That was particularly the case here, as there had been corroborated reports by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International of cases of police brutality.
Many Experts also expressed a high level of concern regarding the situation of Roma in the Ukraine. One Expert saw an apparent turning away on the part of the Government from programmes for the Roma minority. Several Experts were concerned about the language used in the report to describe them, which appeared to cast the Roma’s attitudes as largely responsible for their marginalization. An Expert brought up the recent reports of human rights violations of the Roma. Another Expert noted the grave humanitarian situation of that minority, which had little access to social services.
The delegation of Ukraine also included members of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as representatives from the Permanent Mission of the Ukraine to the United Nations Office at Geneva.
The Committee will present its written observations and recommendations on the reports of Ukraine, which were presented in one document, at the end of its session, which concludes on 18 August.
When the Committee reconvenes at 3 p.m. it will begin to formulate concluding observations on reports presented by State parties at this session, and may also consider other matters in a public meeting.
Report of Ukraine
The seventeenth and eighteenth periodic reports of Ukraine, submitted in one document (CERD/C/UKR/18), state that according to a 2001 census, there are 37.5 million Ukrainians living within the country’s borders and 10.9 million representatives of more than 130 nationalities. It says that with 8.3 million people, Russians are the largest national minority, accounting for 17.3 per cent of the total population. There are 16 other ethnic minority groups with some 300,000 to 100,000 people. Following Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence on 24 August 1991, the Declaration on the Rights of Nationalities (1991) was adopted, which clearly indicated the State’s intent to work to promote harmony in inter-ethnic relations in the country and the cultural development of all national minorities. The Declaration stressed that discrimination based on nationality is prohibited and punishable by law.
A great deal of attention is being given to the integration into Ukrainian society of Crimean Tatars and persons of other nationalities who were previously deported for reasons of nationality. In 2002 the Cabinet of Ministers approved a programme for the adaptation and integration into Ukrainian society of deported Crimean Tatars and persons of other nationalities and for their cultural revival and development, in addition to a programme to promote the social development and adaptation of Crimean Tatar youth, both of which are now being implemented. These programmes call for the establishment of a multi-ethnic cultural centre, the publication of educational literature for former deportees, assistance to the Gasprinsky Republican Crimean Tatar Library and to the Crimean Ethnographic Museum, as well as other measures.
Presentation of Report
SERGII RUDYK, Head of the State Committee on National Citizenship of Ukraine, introducing the report of Ukraine, said that Ukraine had formerly deported minorities and asylum-seekers and that the new Government had now put programmes in place to address that situation. The report also touched on the formation and implementation of policy regarding labour relations, and the rights of minorities, refugees and asylum-seekers, among other things.
Mr. Rudyk wished to highlight some of the many important events that had taken place in Ukraine since the drafting of the report that showed that it was on the right road to ensuring the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all. In March 2006, democratic national and local elections had been held, which had been confirmed to be free and fair by independent international monitors. As a result of political restructuring in Ukraine a strategic document had been signed by all sides in Parliament, which included the provision allowing all citizens to use their languages of national origin and to promote their use in public life, in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ratified by Ukraine in 2003).
There were about 250,000 Crimean Tatars, or about 1.7 per cent of the Ukrainian population, living today in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. They had been expelled from their homes in the Soviet era and the number of returns was growing every year. The Ukrainian Government had adopted a programme for the settlement and installation of deported Crimean Tatars and persons of other nationalities who had returned to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as permanent residents, with a view to addressing socio-economic, cultural and educational problems related to their return. Mr. Rudyk noted an adequate increase in the representation of Crimean Tatars in public life, and Crimean Tatars were represented in the national parliament, on the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and about 1,000 Crimean Tatars served as deputies on local councils in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
Regarding immigration policies, the delegation said that on 31 May 2005, Ukraine amended the law on refugees. Previously refugees had five days to apply to the authorities, now there were no deadlines for such applications.
Courses were being provided on the rights of refugees for State officials and a handbook and other textbooks had been developed for the course, which was offered by the safety and security body of Ukraine.
Mr. Rudyk noted that, in addition to a boom in legal immigration, there
had also been an increase in illegal immigration to Ukraine. About 5,000 people had been detained last year by border officials for attempting to illegally enter the country. In 2005, 121 refugees received Ukrainian citizenship, and 30 had received citizenship so far this year.
Turning to freedom of expression, the Languages Act and the Print Media Act addressed the issue of linguistic minorities in the country. Seven newspapers in national minority languages were published with State financial support, including Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Armenian, Jewish (Hebrew and Yiddish) and Crimean Tatar.
There was a draft law to strengthen the law on national minorities, Mr. Rudyk said.
In 2005, a programme to integrate the Roma people into Ukrainian society was established. That programme had come to an end this year, but work was being undertaken to ensure that the Cabinet of Ministers would renew it. There were 47,000 Roma spread throughout the territory. There were 88 Roma non-governmental organizations, which worked to revive the culture and traditions of that minority.
Oral Questions Raised by the Rapporteur and Experts
LINOS-ALEXANDRE SICILIANOS, the Committee Expert serving as Country Rapporteur for Ukraine, noted that Ukraine had ratified all seven core United Nations human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers; indeed, it was one of the very few European Union members to have done so. It had also signed most of the European Union human rights conventions.
Mr. Sicilianos noted that the report had not been structured following the Committee’s guidelines. He also drew the delegation’s attention that new guidelines had been adopted recently.
According to information, a draft Anti-Discrimination bill was currently pending before the Ukrainian Parliament. Mr. Sicilianos stressed the need for such comprehensive legislation to guarantee access to housing, social services, etc. It was also important, however, that such legislation included indirect discrimination – an area he believed was not covered by the present bill.
On the topic of refugee law, Mr. Sicilianos had heard that there would be a delay in the adoption of new legislation on the subject, and he requested further information.
Noting that Ukraine had sometimes argued that there should be no privileges on the basis of ethnic origin in order not to craft special measures for minorities, Mr. Sicilianos reminded the delegation that, in the view of the Committee, special measures were not discrimination; they were formulated to create a situation of effective equality as opposed to de facto equality.
Mr. Sicilianos had a few concerns about the formulation of Article 151 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which covered racist statements or other unacceptable speech. The use of “wilful” in that provision indicated to him that negligent acts would not be covered and, moreover, that only such acts that were addressed to citizens were included within its scope.
Often Roma were unable to secure legal aid, Mr. Sicilianos noted. It was also often the case that Roma lacked proper identification documents, and that should be handled sensitively by State law enforcement officials. According to reports received from the Roma Human Rights Centre, there had been allegations of human rights violations against the Roma, notably in connection with pre-trial detention.
Regarding incidents of religious vandalism in various parts in Ukraine, Mr. Sicilianos noted that Amnesty International had cited numerous cases of such acts against Jewish religious centres.
Mr. Sicilianos commended the advances made in the area of the Freedom of expression and the use of languages. The new Languages Act and the Print Media Act were both noteworthy. The ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages by Ukraine was of particular importance.
Other Experts raised questions and made comments on various subjects, including information regarding training for police with respect to the Convention; the rise of neo-Nazi groups; provisions for civil and political rights in national legislation on minorities, and other measures in that regard.
Many Experts expressed a high level of concern regarding the situation of Roma in Ukraine. One Expert saw an apparent turning away on the part of the Government from programmes for the Roma minority. Several Experts were concerned about the language used in the report to describe them, which appeared to cast the Roma’s attitudes as largely responsible for their marginalization. An Expert brought up the recent reports of human rights violations of the Roma. Another Expert noted the grave humanitarian situation of that minority, which had little access to social services. Several Experts were also puzzled by a mention of a programme for the spiritual development of the Roma, and requested clarification.
Response by Delegation to Questions by Experts
The delegation said that with regards to the Committee’s request for information on the implementation of the Committee’s recommendations, Ukraine had published a compilation of the recommendations for the Ukraine by all of the United Nations human rights treaty bodies, in three languages – Ukrainian Russian and English. The publication also contained the text of the relevant treaties and information on how to contact the Ombudsman, through a website that had been set up for his office. The compilation had been presented to the President for him to formulate his directives to the various Government bodies based on those recommendations.
Regarding allegations that the Government census had purposely underestimated the numbers of minority populations, that was not the case. There had been mistakes made in the holding of the census, the delegation said. Some of the census takers refused to put in the nationality of those who were being counted. That had to do with the ethnic groups such as the Russians – of whom there were over 8 million – but whom were often not counted as a minority for reasons of lack of documentation. The same was true of the Roma. The Roma figures were something like 60,000, but the Roma held their own census and found the number was something more like 200,000. Another complicating factor for the census had been the significant movement of migrant populations, including through illegal migration.
The Human Rights Ombudsman had written a report on the situation of national and ethnic minorities in Ukraine. That report showed that there had been considerable positive progress with regard to dealing with inter-ethnic conflicts and the rights of national minorities in the country. There existed, however, the possibility of discrimination, the delegation, said. A number of negative phenomena in that vein had been included in the report. The Ombudsman had drafted some very unique recommendations for how to deal with those situations. Unfortunately, none of those recommendations had been adopted as yet.
The delegation said that the Ministry of Justice did not have figures for the minority make up of the State Committee on National Citizenship. Informally, the delegation was able to say that, among minority members of the Ministry, there were Crimean Tatars, Jews, Poles, and Russians.
Regarding substantive changes envisaged by the new anti-discrimination legislation, the delegation said that there were three. First, it provided for punishment for acts of discrimination. Second, it provided for national cultural autonomy and the rights for national minorities to use their own family names and their native languages. Thirdly, there were programmes for national minorities. There was a programme to preserve the cultural heritage of the small groups of the Crimean Karaims and Krymchaks, who had their own languages. There was also a programme to protect the cultural particularities of the Roma people.
Regarding the negative language used to describe the attitudes of the Roma, which a few Experts had drawn to the attention of the delegation, the delegation agreed with the Committee’s assessment and said that such language would not be used in future reports.
Responding to reports that the population of all minority groups had declined in the Ukraine, except for those of the Crimean Tatars, the delegation explained that was because the Crimeans had no other homeland. A number of Germans had returned to Germany, for example, and the same was true for the Greeks, Armenians or Bulgarians. But that was not true of the Crimean Tatars, who had no other homeland outside the Ukraine. They had increasingly returned to the Crimea.
A clear distinction needed to be drawn between property problems and inter-ethnic conflict. In that regard, the delegation observed that in the repatriation of people to the Crimea, the ethnic factor was not the only factor in the return of land or other property. In some cases people had simply seized land or government property. The press asserted that that had been done by Crimean Tatars, but that was far from always being the case. One study showed that only 8 per cent of the land seized had been seized by Crimean Tatars. Land values were extremely high in the area, and that was driving the seizures, regardless of one’s national origin.
The delegation acknowledged that there was an ethnic component in terms of the redistribution of land. Agricultural land had been granted to members of the collective farms set up under the Soviet system. The ethnic Tatars who returned, however, had obviously not been members of those collectives. There had been efforts to resolve the land question on the basis of the ethnic factor, as well as using political persuasion. It was stressed that conflicts over property had to be pursued through legislative or legal means. In that connection, it was pointed out that the Crimea had not seen the break out of ethnic conflicts.
The new draft legislation to combat discrimination would be aligned with the Convention, the delegation confirmed.
There were provisions to maximize attendance of Roma children in school, and teachers and the police reviewed the conditions of children not attending school to assess the reasons for that. Roma families received financial assistance for schoolbooks, other school materials and food. There were summer sports camps provided for Roma children. The majority of the Roma lived in Transcarpathia. In Transcarpathia, in 2005-2006, some 6,000 Roma children attended schools in that region. In addition to special schools with Roma language and literature classes, there were also Sunday schools. There were Roma-language schools in other districts as well, the delegation added.
There were some 15 schools in which the Crimean Tatar language was taught, with some 3,500 pupils. The delegation noted that there were also Russian-language schools.
Regarding political participation, the delegation said that political parties could be linked to nationality or some other purpose. The only requirements for the establishment of a political party was that its purpose could not be found to be detrimental to the values established by the Constitution and members had to be 18 years of age or older. Of course, that only applied to citizens. There was a separate law for foreigners and stateless persons that pertained to all of their rights and obligations with regard to the State.
Turning to oversight of police authorities, the delegation said that over the past 6 months, the Department for Internal Security had conducted investigations into dozens of its members. All 27 heads of the local police had been replaced in Sebastopol and Kiev with new staff that had received professional training. The department had over 5,000 members throughout the country, some 1,500 in the police force. Some years ago it would not have been thought possible for civilians to be in charge of police, but a number of individuals in those positions were now civilians.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs had investigated a number of offences against Roma. Over 400 cases of alleged rights violations by the police were presently being reviewed, the delegation said.
The delegation noted that crimes committed by ethnic minorities only represented a small fraction of the criminal activities in the country. With regard, in particular, to the Roma, they were responsible for only 0.08 per cent of all narcotics-related offences.
There had been no Government refusals for the filling out of identity documents, passports and the like, for the Roma, nor for any other minority groups, the delegation stressed. The delegation noted that there had been a number of complaints about the issuance of identity documents; however, for the past eight months no such complaints had been received by Roma individuals.
To obtain a passport, the Parliament had decreed in 2003 that that did not require information on national origin, such as had been required for the passports of the former Soviet Union, the delegation observed.
On the issue of migration, the delegation noted that a significant number of illegal migrants did not have any passports, and there were no embassies for their countries of origin in Ukraine, specifically, in the case of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In 2004 and 2005, expulsion of illegal foreigners cost the State $ 600,000.
On the topic of anti-Semitism and publications, such publications were very rare and there was nothing systematic about them. All such publications were investigated individually. One problem, the delegation pointed out, was that the texts published were mainly based on incomplete and distorted information from Jewish sources. That is, things were taken out of context, for example, from the Torah, and people tried to incite violence on the basis of that. There was not as yet a single overarching expert body to provide concrete guidelines as to what was anti-Semitism or incitement.
Acts of vandalism in Ukraine were also not systematic. They were severely prosecuted. However, the delegation said, they had to be very careful in considering such cases. For example, in May 2006, certain tombstones in an old Jewish cemetery had been vandalized. However, following a careful investigation it turned out that people were in fact stealing scrap metal. So, it was clearly vandalism, but it had no racial motivation. In another case, graffiti had defaced a Jewish building, but it had also been scrawled over a number of different buildings. There had been practically no cases in Ukraine in which anti-Semitism was the motivating factor.
At present there was no problem with applications by stateless persons for refugee status. The current processing time was one month for such applications.
The delegation said the concept of refugee was based on the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. It was recognized, however, that a clearer definition was needed, and the Government was working on legislation in that area. The current legislation did not have a provision for cases of temporary protection and simply was not wide enough. For example, citizens of Uzbekistan had been deported as they did not fall under the category of refugees. There was no provision for humanitarian protection in the current definition that could be applied.
With regard to the situation of Chechens, those applying for asylum were treated as citizens of the Russian Federation; there were 138 Chechen refugees in Ukraine today.
There was a special course offered by the Customs Officials Academy on the rights of refugees, attended by all law enforcement officials dealing with the area of refugees and migrants. There was a similar course offered at the University of Kiev, the delegation said.
Concerning political participation for non-citizens in political parties, the delegation said that they were able to be involved in any way they liked, except they could not establish their own political party.
Finally, a member of the delegation from the Human Rights Ombudsman’s office pointed out that the situation with regard to minority and ethnic languages was more troubled than the one that had been painted. It did not take into account the impact of the suppression of the Ukrainian language under the Soviet regime; it ignored the difficulties that had been encountered in implementing the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages, which had huge financial and administrative implications; and the new language legislation contemplated did not encompass all the regional languages, but mainly concerned a few Russian enclaves where the ability to use the Russian language had been extended to cover almost all areas of public life.
Preliminary Concluding Remarks
LINOS-ALEXANDRE SICILIANOS, the Committee Expert who served as country Rapporteur for Ukraine, thanked the Ukrainian delegation for its report and the replies to the Committee’s questions. He appreciated the inclusion of members of the Ombudsman’s office in the delegation and welcomed their statements, though he would appreciate more information with regard to the independence of that office following the recent elections.
Mr. Sicilianos noted with interest the information provided by the delegation on the education of the Tatars and the Roma. He also noted that there were no prosecutions under way regarding discrimination against the Roma. In that connection, he reminded Ukraine that it was the Committee’s position that that did not mean that no such cases existed, and it might be that the Roma were simply not lodging complaints. That was particularly the case here, as there had been corroborated reports by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International of such cases of police brutality.
Regarding the issuance of identity documentation, he noted the delegation’s assertion that there were no problems in that regard, but, given the acknowledged complaints by minorities themselves, Mr. Sicilianos suggested that the Ukrainian authorities should perhaps make a greater effort. He also noted the delegation’s statements that detention conditions had improved and that there were no cases of vandalism owing to racial motives.
Mr. Sicilianos appreciated the self-critical remarks about the law on refugees and felt that the delegation had demonstrated that the competent authorities were well aware of shortcomings in that area and were working to address them.
Finally, Mr. Sicilianos took note of the remarks by the Ombudsman’s office with regard to language.
In the concluding observations, the Committee would try to take account of all of those issues, Mr. Sicilianos said.
For use of the information media; not an official record
CRD06027E