Vijesti ROMI.HR

According to the report on Ukraine published on 19 September 2017, ECRI gave two recommendations on different fields of the problems: sexual orientation/gender identity and court fees for Roma people who are willing to get their personal identification documents.

ECRI recommended to add information about the punishment in the case of hatred or violence on the basis of racial, national or religious enmity, sexual belonging to the Article 161 (1, 2) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The Action Plan on Implementation of the National Human Rights Strategy stands for the inclusion of the grounds of the sexual orientation and gender identity in Article 67 of the Criminal Code. On 31 October 2019 the amendment to the Criminal Code entered into force, but there was the only change done in the Article 67, it included the ground of “sexual belonging”.

As the result, ECRI concludes that its recommendations were not implemented.

The second part of the recommendations included the change of court fees for Roma people who try to get their personal identification documents.

ECRI was informed about the authority of the Article 8 of the Law on Court Fees 2012, which postpones or reduces the payment of the court fees if it accedes five percent of the annual income of the plaintiff for the previous calendar year. However, there is still a paradox, which says that a plaintiff has to provide a document, which shows inability to cover the fees of the court. This rule includes Roma people as well. ECRI came to the conclusion that the Article has never been actually applied.

According to all the information provided, no changes, recommended by ECRI, were implemented.