On 31 October 2023, a high-level expert meeting was held in Kyiv to discuss the state of implementation of the Penitentiary Reform Strategy until 2026 in light of the Council of Europe standards, as well as execution of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights related to the prison system of Ukraine.

Two Deputy Ministers of Justice (MoJ) of Ukraine, the Government Agent before the European Court on Human Rights and senior representatives of the State Department for Execution of Criminal Sanctions of Ukraine participated in the meeting.

The MoJ presented the progress of the penitentiary reform during the first nine months of 2023 and the pending legislative initiatives aimed at accelerating the reform. The speakers highlighted positive developments regarding the detention conditions in penitentiary institutions, the use of alternative sanctions and rehabilitation tools in prisons. Deputy Minister Vysotska confirmed the commitment to improving the penitentiary system through an ambitious reform process and thanked the Council of Europe for its contribution and support.

Mykola Gnatovskyi, Judge of the European Court and Pavlo Pushkar, Department of Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, stressed the importance of the measures to be taken in accordance with the Court judgments in Nevmerzhytskyi v. Ukraine and Davydov v. Ukraine, in light of the Penitentiary Strategy and the Action Plan, in particular related to establishment of Convention-compliant preventive and compensatory remedies and increasing the minimum standard of personal space for detainees.

Donche Boshkovski, Co-operation in Police and Deprivation of Liberty, confirmed the readiness of the Council of Europe to provide continuous support to the Ukrainian partners in overcoming structural problems in the penitentiary system and implementing the Penitentiary Reform Strategy till 2026.

This activity was organized within the framework of the EU and CoE Joint Project ”Support to the prison reform in Ukraine Plus (SPERU+)”.