Reintegration of Crimea: ZMINA joins Crimea Wave forum

On April 25, Kyiv hosted “Crimea Wave: Reintegration of Crimea and Role of Youth” forum organized by ZeMolodizhka organization with the participation of the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Q-hub project and educational platform. Alena Luniova, advocacy director at Human Rights Centre ZMINA joined the event. 

During the three panel discussions of the forum, the military, political, and legal dimensions of the reintegration of Crimea, as well as the socio-economic and cultural and informational reintegration of the peninsula, were discussed. 

The event was also attended by Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Tamila Tasheva, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Korniyenko, Head of the Servant of the People political party Olena Shuliak, leader of the Crimean Tatar people, MP of Ukraine Mustafa Dzhemilev, First Deputy Head of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol Vitaliy Sekretar, Head of the Crimea Platform’s Support Service Maria Tomak, and others. 

Alena Luniova, advocacy director at Human Rights Centre ZMINA participated in the panel dedicated to the socio-economic problems and focused in her speech on the documents issued in occupied Crimea over the past nine years. 

“The first thing MPs can do is to support the government draft law No. 9069 which regulates the issue of introducing an administrative (out-of-court) procedure for establishing the facts of birth, marriage/divorce, and death of a person in the occupied territory. Another huge group of documents is educational certificates, diplomas – hundreds of thousands of them. As a state, we have to make one of the decisions: either we do not recognize these documents in any way and, therefore, have to somehow retrain thousands of people in schools, or we recognize them through passing educational tests, confirmation of qualifications and competences. The second option is human-oriented, and I hope we will choose this path,” Luniova said. 

In addition, the forum participants consider the reintegration of Crimea to be a difficult process, therefore, in particular, it is necessary to use the potential and professionalism of Ukrainian youth who will play a key role in this process.