ANNUAL REPORTOF UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 64 The largest amount of waste accumulated at waste disposal sites is concentrated in the following oblasts: Dnepropetrovsk – 82.6%, Donetsk – 6.9%, Kirovohrad – 4% and Lviv – 1.8% (see Annex 2.1). The legislation of Ukraine prohibits the unauthorized disposal of waste in the territories of cities, other settlements and territories of the nature reserve fund and other places that may pose a danger to the environment and human health. CHAPTER 2 At the same time, landfills for waste disposal are overwhelmingly spontaneous (especially in rural settlements), do not meet sanitary and environmental standards, and in some cases waste disposal in water protection areas is documented. The responsibility for improper waste management rests with the owner of the waste, which in many cases is unknown. In addition, the Law of Ukraine “On Waste” # 187/98-BP of 5 March 1998 is ineffective due to the lack of adequate infrastructure, financing, weakening of environmental supervision and a conflict between economic development and conservation of ecosystems. In accordance with the Action Plan for Implementation of the Strategic Directions of the Commissioner’s Activity in 2019, 45 monitoring visits and inspections were conducted on waste management to cities and amalgamated territorial communities of Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr , Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Volyn, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Ternopil oblasts. Monitoring revealed systemic violations of the environmental legislation of Ukraine that have negative impact on the rights of citizens: • the population is not updated about the impact of the waste and the places or objects of its storage and disposal on the environment and human health; • there are no schemes for sanitary cleaning of settlements; • use of unregistered solid waste landfills; • no separate collection of household waste is organized; • providers of household waste removal services are not competitively selected. It should be noted that the environmental legislation obliges local self-government bodies to ensure the collection of household waste (including separate waste collection). Therefore, these are the territorial communities that should initiate change in this area. Ensuring the right of citizens to access quality drinking water In 2019, the quality of drinking water gradually deteriorated due to discharges of industrial enterprises into local rivers and lakes without proper and quality wastewater treatment. Most Ukrainians consume water from surface sources – lakes, ponds, rivers. In particular, nearly 30 million people drink water from Dnipro river. As every year a large amount of improperly treated wastewater is discharged into the basins, the population of Ukraine consumes water that does not meet the standards and is a danger to their health.