Human rights activists ask to repeal rule discriminating displaced university entrants

The law requires that university entrants provide military service card or designee assignment within university admission campaign, which deprives them of the right to study in Ukrainian universities.

This is said in the statement, made by the Centre for Civic Education “Almenda” and other human rights organizations.

A sufficient problem has arisen in course of the university admission campaign, at the stage of submission of documents, the human rights activists state. According to the requirements for admission to universities in Ukraine in 2015, approved by the decree of the Education and Science Ministry of Ukraine No. 1172 of 15 October 2014, “The applicant shall provide… military service card or designee assignment.”

However, the entrants coming from the temporarily occupied territories have neither military service card, nor designee assignment. Thus, being governed by the legislation, the admission boards refuse to accept the documents, referring to the fact that their package is incomplete.

“The graduates from the temporarily occupied territories, having passed through the thorny way (external studies, getting high school diplomas, external independent testing, etc.), have faced the fact they cannot enter Ukrainian universities,” the activists note.

In their address, the human rights activists ask to urgently solve this problem, namely to suspend this rule for the entrants from temporarily occupied territories, or to find other solutions.

As a reminder, according to the Centre for Civic Education “Almenda”, only 300 people out of 12,000 managed to get Ukrainian high school diplomas last year, mainly thanks to the help of the NGOs. This year, only 65 people managed to register for external independent testing.