In October 2019, Ukraine submitted its seventh periodic report, in which it responded to questions posed by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on October 18, 2018. A considerable number of these issues concerned the observance of economic, social and cultural rights of the conflct-affcted population in Ukraine. The state’s replies, however, do not provide the complete picture regarding the observance of the rights of such groups as IDPs and residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas as well as areas located near the war zone (the so-called «grey zone»).

This alternative report was prepared by an informal Coalition of non-governmental organizations involved in the protection of conflct-affcted persons, including IDPs and residents of the temporarily occupied territories. The authors have considerable experience in drafing and advocating for new legislation related to the protection of IDPs’ rights, participate in working groups of relevant ministries, provide signifiant social and legal assistance to conflct-affcted people and provide coverage of the events that take place in the temporarily occupied territories.

The Coalition includes:
NGO Donbas SOS, http://www.donbasssos.org
NGO Crimea SOS, http://krymsos.com/
Charitable fund Right to Protection, www.r2p.org.ua
Charitable fund Vostok SOS, http://vostok-sos.org/
NGO Civil holding GROUP OF INFLUENCE, https://www.vplyv.org.ua/
The Radnyk programme implemented by the charitable fund Stabilization Support Services, http://radnyk.org, https://sss-ua.org
NGO ZMINA Human Rights Center https://org.zmina.info/
NGO Crimean Human Rights Group https://crimeahrg.org/

Download Report

In 2017, the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsperson) and partner organizations developed a Methodology to monitor observance of the rights of internally displaced persons. The work was commissioned by the Ombudsperson with the support of UNDP’s “Strengthening the Capacities of the Office of the Ombudsperson” project and the Council of Europe’s “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine” project. It was co-ordinated by the “Group of Influence” NGO.

The Methodology includes toolsets for various target groups, which, based on the specificities of the mandate of the Human Rights Ombudsperson, enable systemic problems concerning the rights of internally displaced persons to be identified and individual violations of the rights of IDPs that require prompt response to be recorded.

This report is based on data from comprehensive research based on a series of surveys of different target groups and focused analysis of the findings at each stage.