SECTION 1.
standards relating to equipment of holding
facilities and protection of detainees’ rights
and freedoms.
This situation has entailed numerous
violations of human rights and freedoms of
the administratively detained persons that
can be regarded as their cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment.
In particular,
- the facilities for administrative detainees
fail to meet the standards accepted in the
UN and CoE member states (especially with
regard to floor area and space per person,
free access to fresh air and drinking water,
requirements as to ventilation, lighting,
etc.);
- the procedures for restriction of the rights
and freedoms of administrative detainees
are not prescribed by law and the procedure
of ensuring the rights and obligations of
this category of detainees rests only upon
inner departmental regulations.
In this regard the Ombudsman made a
submission to the Prime Minister of Ukraine
with a request to establish a working group
composed of experts from the Ministry
of Justice of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal
Affairs of Ukraine, State Migration Service
of Ukraine and the State Border Service of
Ukraine, with involvement of employees of
the Ombudsman’s Secretariat, for devising a
draft law that would define uniform national
standards of detention of persons arrested for
committed administrative offenses and the
procedure for restriction of their rights and
freedoms. Currently this group exists with the
Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. Regrettably, as
of 31.12.2013 the relevant draft has not been
developed.
Another issue of systemic violation
revealed in the course of monitoring is the
lack of consistency between departmental
25
regulations of various ministries and
agencies (Ministry of Internal Affairs,
Security Service, SSU, SMSU, SPSU) where
they concern the number and types of
items that a detainee may have, receive
or buy at own cost or the items that are
strictly forbidden. In her submission
addressed to the Prime Minister of Ukraine
the Ombudsman noted that the main
differences in the detention or sentence
enforcement procedures in the custodial
institutions should be the purpose and
duration of custody and the prisoners’
status in the criminal or administrative
process, while the differences in the
conditions of custody for these persons
should be minimal, and the security
measures should depend on the degree of
the social danger or national security threat
that each individual poses.
However, the aforementioned state
agencies apply different approaches to the
regulation of the conditions of detention
of persons in subordinate institutions and
even resort to utterly ungrounded security
procedures. The effective legislation and
the agency regulations on the operation
of these institutions contain significant
discrepancies in the lists of items, objects
and foodstuffs allowed to possess, buy or
receive and in the lists of items allowed for
use.
Pursuant to the Ombudsman’s submission
the Ministry of Justice established an
interagency working group in order to
develop uniform requirements for conditions
of detention in custodial settings, in view of
the domestic and international best practices.
Unfortunately, as of 31.12.2013 the relevant
draft has not been developed.
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents