Ukrainian Ombudsperson complains to UN Special Rapporteur about lack of long-term solutions for IDPs

Two years have passed since hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and move to safer territory, and the state still does not have a single holistic view of the further fate of internally displaced persons, the long-term solutions regarding them and their effective integration into the local community have not been found.

Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Valeria Lutkovska said this at the meeting with UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Chaloka Beyani, the Commissioner’s press service reports.

Another problem, which Ukrainian Ombudsperson paid attention to, is the lack of interaction between central and local authorities.

“The government is very slow in adapting the secondary legislation on internally displaced to the national law. If there is no understanding between the central and local bodies on the adopted changes, the situation gets even worse, and the problems and human rights violations only increase as a consequence,” Lutkovska said.

She also noted that some regions of the country, which housed the majority of internally displaced persons, experienced an increased load on the territorial communities.

“There are cases where the number of internally displaced persons in the society is greater than the total population, which was before the conflict. In this context, we see again the lack of institutional capacity, because the necessary field work is not carried out,” Lutkovska is convinced.

Despite the complexity of the problems of internally displaced persons, which require comprehensive solutions, the Ukrainian Ombudsperson believes that the joint efforts of public authorities with a strong support of non-governmental organizations and initiatives may provide an effective solution.

In turn, Chaloka Beyani drew attention to the importance of taking into account the international experience in planning further actions to address the problems of the internally displaced persons.

The meeting was also attended by senior legal adviser at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Yug Bisso, human rights expert at the UN Monitoring Mission for Human Rights to Ukraine Olesya Ohryzko, representative of the Commissioner for the rights of internally displaced persons Zhanna Lukyanenko, deputy head the Secretariat of the Ombudsperson Olena Smirnova.

As a reminder, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Chaloka Beyani is paying a visit to Ukraine on September 1-9. During the visit, he will meet with representatives of the government, civil society and displaced families.

The Special Rapporteur will assess the current status of internally displaced persons in the country and discuss the implementation of recommendations for its improvement, which he had submitted following his previous visit in 2014.