OSCE conducts seminar on access to justice challenges in relocated administrative courts in eastern Ukraine

Access to justice in courts of administrative jurisdiction in times of conflict, protection of human rights and application of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case law were in the focus of an OSCE-supported seminar on 6 and 7 June 2016 in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, which brought together some 60 judges working in the administrative courts relocated from Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as local and international experts.

The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine organized the event in co-operation with the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and the joint Council of Europe-European Union project.

The participants discussed the issue of access to justice and justice delivery challenges, including lack of access to documents and court materials. The judges of the Higher Administrative Court presented a summary of court practice in Ukraine as a useful guide for the judges of the lower instances.

“This is the second seminar aimed at providing a platform for the discussion of issues relating to access to justice and of challenges which administrative court judges are facing in justice delivery, as well as a place for sharing relevant international experience,” said Jeff Erlich, Senior Project Officer at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine. “We also plan to carry out a series of multi-stakeholder dialogue events with the engagement of judiciary, experts, civil society and other stakeholders, to discuss and elaborate possible roadmaps for overcoming existing challenges.”

International experts made presentations about the experience of other countries in accessing justice on territories outside of the government’s control, positive obligations imposed by the European Convention on Human Rights on member states that are not controlling their territories, as well as about the protection of internally displaced persons’ rights in ECtHR case law and the implementation of ECtHR case-law in areas outside of government control.

The seminar is part of the OSCE Project Co-ordinator’s  project on enhancing the coherence of administrative court practice in Ukraine, implemented at the request of the Higher Administrative Court and funded by the Government of Germany.