On 24 April 2018, the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations, chaired by PGA leading member, Hon. Hryhoriy Nemyria, MP, together with the PGA partner NGO “Center for Civil Liberties”, held a roundtable “Ensuring harmonization of the criminal legislation with provisions of the international law - a considerable step on the way to protecting human rights”. Participants included members of Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada), representatives of government bodies, experts, NGOs and international organizations.

The Roundtable focused on the following points:

• Human rights violations during the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution/ Revolution of Dignity

• Lack of human rights protection on the temporarily-occupied territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and separate districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions during the armed conflict with the Russian Federation

• The need to amend the criminal legislation and establish the liability for the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression.

This is not the first roundtable on the topic. But it is extremely important in today’s context. Ukraine has signed the Rome Statute and the Verkhovna Rada has twice voted for resolutions on the acknowledgment of the ICC jurisdiction, but our state has not yet ratified the Rome Statute. We have a military conflict in the East of Ukraine and, as a result, a great number of civil population that suffered. In the current situation, we must not only explain the importance of the Rome Statute ratification by Ukraine but use the existing instruments and create new ones. Hon. Hryhoriy Nemyria, MP
Chairman of the Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations
Member, PGA Executive Board

Hon. Nemyria notified that to realize the Action Plan on implementation of the National Strategy on Human Rights for the period up to 2020, the Ministry of Justice, with the contribution by the Centre for Civil Liberties and input by PGA, drafted a Law “On amendments to some Legislative Acts to Provide for the Harmonization of the Criminal Legislation with Provisions of International Law.” The draft law includes crimes as enshrined in the Rome Statute and general principles of international criminal law, as well as modes of criminal liability for international crimes.

Hon. Nemyria also notified that the 40th Annual Forum of Parliamentarians for Global Action was planned to be held on 16 -17 November 2018 in Kyiv. He expressed his hope that by the time of the Annual Forum, the draft law will have been passed in the second reading, and underlined that the Committee on Human Rights will make everything possible for this.

Ms. Oleksandra Romantsova, Deputy Chair of the Centre for Civil Liberties stressed that the Center documented both violations of human rights and international crimes on the territory of Crimea and the temporarily–occupied part of the territory of Donbass and underlined that the Ukrainian legislation was not ready yet to initiate proceedings on such crimes.

Mr. Mykola Gnatkovskyi, President of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, drew attention to the importance of drafting a law ensuring harmonization of the criminal legislation with provisions of international law and called on to pass the law in the short term.“ Our state must ratify the Rome Statute as soon as possible” – he said.

He noted that after Ukraine had accepted the ICC jurisdiction by lodging an ad hoc declaration according to Art.12(3) of the Rome Statute already on two occasions (note: such acceptance does not require the State to be a party to the Rome Statute), all attempts to delay the Rome Statute ratification seemed irresponsible. 

Mr. Kostiantyn Zadoya, a co-author of the draft law and assistant professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of the National Taras Shevchenko University, Ph.D. in Law, discussed the process of the law drafting, amendments proposed and their effects.

The Roundtable received a very positive appreciation and its outcome might be conducive to accelerating the RS ratification and implementation process.