Ukraine leads the European countries in the number of suicides – human rights defenders

Ukraine leads the European countries in the number of suicides – 22 suicides for 100 thousand people.

As reported by reporter of the Human Rights Information Centre, this was stated by Yevhen Zakharov, representative of the Coalition “Against Tortures”, during the presentation of alternative reports as a part of the Universal Periodic Review.

According to Zakharov, there is a stable tendency of prevalence of death rate over birth rate in Ukraine.

“Ukraine leads the European countries in the number of suicides – 22 suicides for 100 thousand people. And in penal institutions the number is much higher – 66 suicides for 100 thousand people. Mortality in places of detention is much higher than it could be”, – commented Yevhen Zakharov.

In the report of the Coalition of Human Rights Organizations “Against Tortures”, human rights defenders submitted a commentary of psychologists about the high number of suicides. Psychologists explain that for almost 3 years Ukrainians have lived in difficult circumstances. Armed conflict in the East, inflation, unemployment, meager pension’s payment, the lack of medical care cause depression and push people to commit suicide.

ALTERNATIVE UPR REPORTS by reference HERE.

Olena Smirnova, representative of the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, also speaks about the high death rate in SIZOs (pre-trial detention centres).

“While visiting places of detention, we are always paying attention to the fact that the conditions of detention must comply with European standards, but there are other alarming signals. The question is about a number of deaths in SIZos. So we must not only talk about the conditions of detention, but also about the safety of the detention and compliance with the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights”, – said Smirnova.

Olena Smirnova also emphasized that as a result of the reform of the Penitentiary Service, a number of other problems emerged. The problems are related to the places of detention that the government can not ignore.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is the world’s largest monitoring mechanism for the observance of human rights. As a part of this review, each UN member country must report to other countries and receive a critical assessment of its report. This is a new human rights monitoring system of the UN Human Rights Council. It is aimed at improving the human rights situation in each of the 193 countries that are members of the UN. As part of this initiative, the UN Member States directly check each other for observance of human rights.

Last time, Ukraine reported in Geneva in 2012. Then our state received 145 recommendations. Of these, Ukraine took into account 115 recommendations and partly took into account 3 recommendations.