Council of Europe supports the Ukrainian authorities in execution of the general measures stemming from the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine. Acting on a request of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Law Enforcement, the Council of Europe prepared expert comments to the Draft Law No. 5336 “On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine Concerning Criminal Liability for Torture” which will serve to execute judgements in Kaverzin/Afanasyev/Belousov groups of cases.

Council of Europe international consultant, Mr. Jeremy McBride, analysed the proposed amendments which relate to the provisions of the Criminal Code of Ukraine dealing with the application of the statute of limitations and the offence of torture. In general, the draft law was positively assessed taking into account that it would bring some improvement to the current arrangements regarding criminal liability for torture. At the same time, there are some shortcomings to be addressed. Particularly, the attention is drawn that the applicability of limitation periods is not extended to the other forms of ill-treatment proscribed by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The full text of the expert comments can be downloaded here.

The expert comments were prepared within the framework of the Council of Europe Project “Human Rights Compliant Criminal Justice System in Ukraine”, which is part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine 2018-2022.