PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS OF ASYLUM SEEKERS

Mr. Plechko noted that the above statistics provoke asylum seekers to illegally cross the borders of Ukraine and head to EU countries. But there is also often abuse of the procedure for obtaining refugee status in Ukraine. Today, UNHCR, despite the agreement with the Ukrainian government, does not have full and permanent access to border crossing points and places where asylum seekers are held.

Tukhan Ediev, program director of the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, identified the main violations of the rights of asylum seekers that they face during detention and stay in temporary detention centers in Ukraine. These include, first of all, the use of physical force by law enforcement officers and border guards during detention, the lack of interpreters, the denial of the right to apply for asylum in Ukraine, the denial of the right to be present in court during the consideration of the case in court, etc. Mr. Ediev also noted that in connection with the implementation of the migration reform in Ukraine, an urgent problem at the moment is that state authorities dealing with migration issues are deprived of any authority, do not have new document forms, and heads of migration services in the regions have not been appointed. This situation, in turn, has a very negative impact on work with asylum seekers and refugees.

Ostap Tymchiy, a lawyer at the Lviv branch of NEEKA “Carpathian Region”, noted that an important element in respecting human rights, including the rights of foreigners, is the resumption of the activities of public councils at the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, because today there are problems with access of human rights defenders to places of detention of foreigners.

The seminar was organized by the Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights together with the Lviv branch of NEEKA “Carpathian Region” within the framework of the project “Conducting advocacy campaigns to protect the rights of asylum seekers and persons undergoing readmission in places of detention of foreigners in Ukraine”, which is implemented with the support of the Open Society Institute.