On 17 February the Kharkov group for human rights protection conducted the regular meeting of the working group in charge of the questions of the freedom of expression. The round table «Access to information in Ukraine. Improvement of legislation and practices» was held in the framework of the meeting.

Representatives of more than 30 public organizations and experts from the international organization «Article 19» were present at the meeting.

The participants considered and discussed the fifth version of the draft of the Law «On information», which was elaborated by the experts of the Kharkov group for human rights protection jointly with the experts in the sphere of mass media.

The participants expressed and discussed a number of the ideas concerning the draft. In particular, the questions about the application of the norms of this law to courts, the special status of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine, whose informational requests may not be rejected, the access to the information connected with the process of issuing decisions and other procedural questions.

The experts of «Article 19» presented their remarks on the topic too; some of these remarks had been already taken into account in the considered version of the draft.

The participants also debated about the foreign experience of regulation of the access to information.

All participants of the round table greatly appreciated the work of experts and the quality of the draft. The suggestion was made to generalize the recommendations given at that meeting, to prepare the next version of the law draft and to discuss it with the legislative bodies and state organs.

The results of the joint project of «Article 19», the Institute of mass information and the Kharkov group for human rights protection were presented on the meeting, as well as the results of the research, conducted by the Kharkov group, of the practices of the access to information possessed by appeal courts, oblast militia directorates, prosecutor’s offices and other law-enforcing organs.

You can obtain the text of the law draft, comments of international experts concerning this draft and the explanations of the experts of the Kharkov group for human rights protection, if you would direct the request to the Secretariat of RUPOR: [email protected]

Volodymir Yavorskiy, Secretariat of the Council of Ukrainian human rights protecting organizations