Human Rights on the Streets of Your City

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20.12.2017

How to stand up for your rights, where to address in case your rights were violated and how to get free legal aid? The Human Rights Information Center with the support of United Nations Development Programme launched an information campaign “Human Rights Day in Your City”.

Over the next several month citizens of Chernihiv, Lviv, Dniper, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Mariupol will learn more about human rights and ways to protect them. During the regional tours, a National Human Rights Baseline Study on how Ukrainians understand human rights will be presented. The one-day campaigns have already taken place in Chernihiv and Lviv. In the center of these cities, we installed temporary thematic exhibition to inform local people about the results of the research, about their rights, free legal aid and how it works. Besides, there was a number of press conferences and interviews with experts, seminars for students and local activists on human rights

“The Study also revealed regional specifics. According to the survey, 78% of Western Ukrainians consider right for life as the most important. The other top three priorities are the right to social well-being, the right to a fair trial, and the freedom of thought and belief. It is interesting that in other regions the right for freedom and thought was not mentioned as often as in Western Ukraine”, says Svitlana Kolyshko, the Head of Group for Human Rights, UNDP in Ukraine Project Coordinator.

These regional tours are aimed to raise public awareness about their rights and the ways to protect them because according to the survey only 46% of Ukrainians tried to stand up for their rights when they were violated. “Among disturbing and alarming facts reviled during the survey is the amount of people ready to approve the lynch law. In the Central region, to which also belongs Chernihiv, this level is the highest – 16% of respondents (comparing to 12% around Ukraine) say that in some cases the lynch law is the only way to punish a criminal”, says Tetyana Pechonchyk, the head of the Human Rights Information Center.

Most of the respondents said that they used social bonds such as friends and relatives as the tool for standing up for their rights, and legal mechanisms such as filing lawsuit, addressing the police or local governance bodies were the

Social connections such as relatives and friends were named by the respondents as one of the most used methods to stand up for their rights, followed by such legal mechanisms as filing a lawsuit, addressing police or local authorities.

The Study findings demonstrated the need for a wide human rights education and complex approaches to raising public awareness on their rights. Informational campaigns are aimed to bring to public attention to the existing problems in this area.