The project's goal is to support the alignment of human rights policies and practices by ensuring compliance of legislative and regulatory frameworks with European standards and capacity-building activities for legal professionals and National Human Rights Institutions in Ukraine.

 

Mr. Vladimir Ristovski, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, welcomed the attendees and spoke of the role of the Council of Europe in realization of the projects within the Programmatic Co-operation Framework (PCF) between the EU and the CoE for the countries of Eastern Partnership: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine, agreed in a Statement of Intent in April 2014.

 

PCF builds upon the CoE and the EU policy priorities in the context of the Eastern Partnership and on the CoE expertise in standard setting, monitoring, and cooperation. It is intended to help addressing the identified issues in the countries concerned and fill critical national gaps in such areas as: i) protection and promotion of human rights, ii) ensuring justice, iii) combating threats to the rule of law, iv) addressing challenges of the information society, v) promoting democratic governance, reflected in the respecting thematic programmes and country-specific actions.

 

PCF also translates priorities of cooperation identified within the framework of the CoE country-specific Action Plans, developed in close consultation with targeted countries' national authorities and adopted bt the CoE Committee of Ministers. Moreover, PCF takes into account Association Agreement Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia signed with the EU in 2014, which provides for consolidation and increasing stability and effectiveness of democratic institutions, and requires from countries to implement reforms and respect democratic principles, human rights, and the rule of law.

 

Mr. Tigran Karapetyan, Head of Unit, Human Rights National Implementation Division, Directorate of Human Rights, delivered a presentation of the project. He emphasized the following project's directions:

 

Support to police reform and fight against ill-treatment and impunity through provision of sufficient expertise to conduct police reform in line with European human rights standards and capacity-building activities to strengthen and implement tools of prevention and investigation of ill-treatment cases;

 

Strengthening the Ombudsperson's Office operational capacities in Ukraine (ill-treatment ion places of deprivation of liberty, non-discrimination, data protection) through provision of expert support to the National Preventive Mechanism and raising public awareness of its capacities; provision of expertise and support to improve the Ombudsperson's Office staff knowledge on anti-discrimination and data protection standards, in order to further strengthen their ability to advocate cases of the indicated specifics;

 

Implementation of European Convention on Human Rights through awareness raising activities on the ECHR standards and case-law of the European Court for human Rights for different groups of legal professionals, with extensive use of tools and materials of the European Programme for Human Rights Education for Legal Professional (the HELP Programme).

 

After a detailed presentation of each component, focusing on relevancy, challenges, and the role of international community in the police reform implementation; national mechanisms of securing compliance with human rights standards; promotion of human rights education for legal professionals through introduction of modern training methods, participants expressed concluding remarks and wrapped up the meeting.