Center’s representative takes part in first meeting of Advisory Council on Human Rights

October 6, the first meeting of the Advisory Council on Human Rights at the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee for Human Rights, National Minorities and International Relations took place.

During the meeting, the experts from various non-governmental organizations discussed the pressing issues in the field of human rights, shared the plans for further development of the Council, and elected executive director of the All-Ukrainian Charitable Foundation “Fulcrum” Bohdan Hloba as the secretary.

According to head of the Parliament’s Committee Hryhoriy Nemyria, the cooperation of the Committee with the Expert Council is a two-way street as the Committee may ask the experts to make some conclusions and the experts, in turn, may draw attention of the Committee members to the legislative gaps.

Representative of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Arkadiy Bushchenko noted the need to elaborate the plan of legislative initiatives and to coordinate it with the Parliament’s Committee.

Expert of the Ukrainian Independent Center for Political Research Yulia Tyshchenko noted that the Parliament should consider the issues related to the electoral law, protection of rights of the national minorities, and the situation in Crimea.

Head of the East European Center for Public Initiatives (Luhansk), coordinator of the public coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbas” Volodymyr Shcherbachenko urged to pay attention to the human rights violations committed during the military conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The experts also discussed the rights and freedoms of the internally displaced persons, including the exercise of the electoral rights of this category of citizens of Ukraine on local elections scheduled for October 25.

“We must help these people and keep in mind that not all of them are able to get the official status of an internally displaced person,” representative of the NGO “Donbas SOS” Oleksandra Dvoretska said. She stressed that the Parliament should pass the bill No. 2166, designed with the participation of the non-governmental organizations, which would strengthen the guarantees of respect for the rights and freedoms of the internally displaced persons.

The meeting of the Advisory Council was also attended by representative of the Human Rights Information Centre Natalia Novyk.

The Advisory Council involves 32 members, who have extensive experience of work in the field of human rights. It was decided that the Council will hold regular meetings once every four months and summon the extraordinary meetings in case of necessity.