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Ministry of Culture examines concluding observations of UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination

The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine hosted a meeting chaired by Deputy Minister Tamara Mazur to discuss the UN concluding recommendations on the elimination of racial discrimination issued in response to the combined 22nd and 23rd Ukraine's report on the implementation of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

 
image006The participants were the members of Ukrainian national delegation to the 90th session of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination who presented the report along with co-coordinator of a non-profit "Bez Kordoniv" (Without Borders) / "Socialna Diya" (Social Action) centre, expert of the Coalition for Combating Discrimination in Ukraine Iryna Fedorovych, representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Office, and other NGO professionals.
 
They considered the UN concluding recommendations, how they relate to the National Human Rights Strategy and the Action Plan, and discussed the challenges and coordination of the ways to fulfil these recommendations.
 
Tamara Mazur uttered that the major challenge nowadays was a different interpretation of domestic and international law. She called on to unify the domestic legislation and statistics as well as determine and justify the legal terminology to improve further reporting to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
 
Director of Department for Religions and Ethnicities Andrii Yurash stressed that the Ministry of Culture had already performed several tasks or was about to finalize them soon. To prove his point, he referred to the institutional capacity building of the Department which now has two more units to deal with inter-ethnic relations. According to him, the Ministry provides support and promotes revival of the same profile units in the State Oblast Administrations – especially in the regions traditionally having multi-ethnic population.
 
children-1531938 960 720Mr. Yurash also provided an update on the launch of Inter-Agency Working Group on implementing the Strategy of Protecting and Integrating Roma National Minority into Ukrainian Society up to 2020. This group enjoys an advisory status under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
 
The participants of the meeting agreed to consolidate efforts and advance cooperation to pursue the Action Plan on implementation of the National Human Rights Strategy up to 2020 and the UN concluding recommendations on the elimination of racial discrimination.
 
This activity has been supported in the framework of UNDP project "Democratisation, Human Rights and Civil Society Development" and "Strenghening Institutional Capacities of the Ombudsperson's Office in Ukraine".