On 14 and 15 July 2016 the Council of Europe Project “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine” in close cooperation with the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration organized the Regional Forum “Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons: National and Regional Responses”. More than 140 national and international participants took part in the forum, including from four focus regions of the Project, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. In their opening remarks, Mr Мårten Ehnberg, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, and Ms Lilja Gretarsdottir, Deputy Head of Division on Cooperation with International Institutions and Civil Society, welcomed the Forum as a critical platform for wider social dialogue on responding to internal displacement in Ukraine, two years in.  

The national authorities were represented by Mr Georgiy Tuka, Deputy Minister of Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, Ms  Zhanna Lukianenko, Representative on IDPs of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Gia Getsadze, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine, Mr Andriy Vyshnevskiy, Head of Coordination Center for Legal Aid Provision, and Mr Evgenii Krivosheyev, Deputy Head of the Department for Deportees and Housing, Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine. Mr Andriy Kravchenko, Deputy Head of the Anti-Terrorist Center of Security Service of Ukraine, also participated in the event.

Mr Tuka described national policies on internal displacement and the rights of IDPs in light of pressing priorities of the newly established Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs; Ms Lukianenko presented the results of the Ombudsperson’s Office monitoring of human rights violations of IDPs; Mr Gia Getsadze presented the key elements of coordination between the State, the regions and civil society with regard to the legal protection of IDPs. Finally, Mr Andriy Vyshnevskiy analysed the right to free legal aid in the framework of human rights protection.

A special plenary session was dedicated to assessing the compliance of Ukrainian legislation and national policies with Council of Europe and other international standards. Ms Antonina Vykhrest, the Project Manager, presented the baseline analysis “Enhancing the National Legal Framework in Ukraine for Protecting the Human Rights of IDPs”. The publication was produced as a comprehensive analysis of 21 themes on internal displacement covering relevant international, Council of Europe and Ukrainian standards, drafted by a team of international and nation experts as a part of the Council of Europe Project (download PDF).

Main challenges in regional responses to internal displacement were widely discussed at the Forum including with the interventions of Mr Vitalii Lytvin, Adviser of the Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Mr Andriy Yanchenko, Deputy Head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration, Mr Igor Stokoz, Deputy Head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration and Mr David Karp, Senior Protection Officer, UNHCR Sub Office in Dnipro.

Prominent international experts Ms Erin Mooney, chief editor and co-author of “Enhancing the National Legal Framework in Ukraine for Protecting the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons” (Canada), Ms Evgenia Giakoumopoulou, Executive Director of the Advocacy Centre on Council of Europe Standards (France), Ms Mariam Giorgobiani, Associate Professor at “Sukhishvili” Teaching University (Georgia), Mr Massimo Moratti, Protection Manager with the Danish Rrefugee Council in Serbia shared their experiences and good practices from Council of Europe member states in responding to internal displacement. Along with national experts and key speakers they also made valuable comments and contributions to three working groups devoted to:

-   Applicability of the European Court of Human Rights Case-Law and Council of Europe Standards in Protecting the Rights of IDPs in Ukraine;

-    Recent Developments in Legislation Related to IDPs Rights and Social Payments: Regional Trends;

-    Models of Compensations for Population Affected by Armed Conflict.

The relevant representatives of national and regional authorities responsible for IDPs-related issues, displaced national academic institutions, representatives of the national free legal aid system as well as international actors and leading national and local NGO’s responded very positively to the baseline publication and supported further introduction of the baseline recommendations into the national legal framework and regional policies on internal displacement in Ukraine.