The Joint Project “EU and CoE working together to strengthening human rights in Ukraine”, which started in July 2019, has been extended until April 2022.
The project consists of the three components - media, penitentiary and component on strengthening the Ombudsperson’s capacity.
The Project teams will continue to work with representatives of parliament, government, civil society and the media to align the national legislation and practices in Ukraine with European standards in the areas of media freedom and human rights.
The extension of the Project will help support the development and advocacy of legislative initiatives, involve even more people in the already developed training initiatives, disseminate the results of analytical materials developed by experts, etc. The project will continue to be a platform for professional dialogue between representatives of government agencies, the civil society, the media, and the expert community.
“The media component will continue to work on the development of strategic documents for the Public Broadcaster, conduct training and public events to support important stages of reform. The component also plans to organise series of training seminars on the safety of journalists for investigators, prosecutors and judges. The necessary expert assistance will be provided on updating audiovisual legislation in line with the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive. In addition, it is planned to work with national partners to improve access to public information in the context of the implementation of the Tromsø Convention, and combat misinformation and information disorder,” Galyna Smirnova, manager of the component “EU and CoE working together to support freedom of media in Ukraine” said.
“The component on strengthening Ombudspersons capacity will provide further expert support to the Parliament of Ukraine and the Ombudsperson's Office in modernizing data protection legislation and institutionalizing an independent supervisory authority in the field of data protection and access to public information. The communication work of the Ombudsperson's Office will remain an important area of the component activities - awareness-raising campaigns will be realised, training initiatives for various professional groups on personal data protection and the implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) will be organized,” said Victoria Galperina, manager of the component “EU and CoE working together to strengthen the Ombudsperson’s capacity to protect human rights”, said.
“The penitentiary component will continue to assist the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and the Department for the Execution of Criminal Sanctions in the implementation of penitentiary reform in Ukraine in accordance with Council of Europe and EU standards, rules, procedures and best practices. The component will help to apply effective methods and tools of modern penitentiary management to reach prison regime based on rehabilitation and introduce the patient-oriented prison healthcare,” Olga Derkach, manager of the component “EU and CoE working together to support the Prison Reform in Ukraine”, said.
The Joint Project “EU and CoE working together to strengthening human rights in Ukraine” is funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe. The Project promotes the introduction of European standards of human rights in Ukraine.
