Ukraine Conference: Implementing Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights

To conclude the previous two days of training in Kyiv, Ukraine, together with the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, EIN hosted a conference on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Ukraine. The event aimed to bring together government officials, the judiciary, civil society, and the media to discuss the implementation of ECtHR judgments and ways to promote this in Ukraine.

Implementing ECtHR judgments can be a significant challenge. Whilst payment of compensation to the victim can be straightforward, it is only the first step. To fully implement the judgment, states often need to carry out reforms to ensure the same underlying human rights violation do not happen to others, requiring changes to legislation, policies, and practices. Ukraine’s implementation of ECtHR judgments has brought widespread positive developments to the protection of human rights in the country. However, Ukraine also faces a significant backlog of unimplemented ECtHR cases.

Volodymyr Yavorskyy, Center for Civil Liberties, opened the conference by outlining the day’s events and setting out participants expectations. Shortly after, two testimonies’ were given by victims of human rights violations: Myroslava Gongadze, widow of journalist Georgiy Gongadze (Gongadze v Ukraine), and Aurika Goryaynova (Goryaynova v Ukraine). They had won cases before the ECtHR and discussed their experience with the implementation of individual measures required by their judgments.

After the testimonies from victims, George Stafford, EIN Director, provided the conference participants with an overview of the implementation of ECtHR judgments in Ukraine. This was followed by presentations from representatives of the executive and the judiciary: Alisa Pietukhova, representative of the Office of the Government Agent of Ukraine, and Arkadiy Bushchenko, Judge at the Criminal Court of Cassation within the Supreme Court, who discussed their roles, experiences and efforts in the implementation of judgments of the ECtHR.

Next, Olga Dubinska, Legal officer at Department of the Execution of ECtHR judgments of the Council of Europe discussed further examples of ECtHR implementation and set out general advice on the promotion of ECtHR judgments in Ukraine. The final presentation was given by Sergyi Zayets, a human rights lawyer, on the mechanism for the supervision of the implementation of the ECtHR judgments in Ukraine, established in the Verkhovnaya Rada of Ukraine.

The conference concluded with a roundtable discussion on systemic challenges of implementing ECtHR judgments and how to promote implementation in Ukraine. This discussion included all of the speakers and participants from the floor.

We hope that the conference provided an opportunity for key actors to reflect on the difficulties involved in this challenge of implementation. We want to thank everyone who presented and participated in the conference.