Human rights activists – protecting the rights of peasant landowners

In the process of reforming property, particularly land, relations, the poor should have a chance to improve their lives. However, their access to legal services, justice, and legal information in general is very limited, which significantly narrows their opportunities. Therefore, there is an urgent need to make significant efforts to help thousands of peasants better understand and protect their property and land rights.

The low level of legal and economic literacy of heads of agricultural enterprises and farms exacerbates these shortcomings. Added to this are the imperfection of the regulatory functions of state authorities and the high level of corruption that has affected the state apparatus and local governments. In rural areas, corruption most often affects the issue of land and property abuse.

Currently, 2/3 of the land in Ukraine (which is about 42 million hectares) is agricultural land. However, some peasants still do not have the opportunity to even produce documents on land ownership and privatize their land plots. And those who have become landowners, due to the extension of the land moratorium by the Verkhovna Rada until 2016, cannot sell their land. Therefore, peasants usually lease their land, receiving insignificant amounts for it. Often, land is used illegally without contracts at all or lease agreements are violated. Without the appropriate legal knowledge and sufficient funds for legal assistance, peasants are unable to inherit land plots, properly defend their rights in relations with tenants, etc.

This is also “contributed” by gaps in the legislation. Yes, the legislation on landowner taxation and social guarantees for farmers does not fully correspond to the actual situation in the agricultural sector. To this should be added radical legislative changes in the system of registration of property rights and property valuation, reform of the system of providing administrative services, as well as the general low standard of living in rural areas.

The same problems apply to the use of property shares. Although most farmers have already received certificates of ownership of property shares and state acts on the right to private ownership of land, a number of questions still arise: what do these rights mean? How can they be managed? How can we combine efforts to collectively or individually create an enterprise capable of successfully operating in market conditions? How to lease land? How to resist abuse by tenants? How can we unite to protect our rights? Unfortunately, most farmers do not have answers to all these questions.

Similar issues are acute, particularly in the Chernihiv region, where the agricultural sector of the economy is one of the leading. Therefore, there is a need for extensive explanatory work on the dissemination of information on land legislation and on the protection of the rights of owners of property shares.

Seeing such problems,

The Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights provides free legal assistance to peasants and landowners

within the framework of the implementation

of the project “Local Communities Against Corruption in the Sphere of Land Turnover in Chernihiv Region” with the support of the Canadian Fund for Supporting Local Initiatives.

This project includes several components, the main ones being:

1) the creation and operation of a Resource Center that helps peasants, landowners, property share owners and farmers resolve issues arising in the course of property and land relations, as well as assist in the protection and exercise of their property rights;

2) an information campaign and legal education on the implementation of property and land rights, conducting legal education events;

3) field work by lawyers in rural areas.

A special telephone “hotline” for legal assistance on the specified topic has been launched:

(0462)-612-532

.

Human rights activists also monitor violations of land rights in order to be better aware of the situation and warn landowners about possible problems and ways to overcome them.