The lawyers of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union provide legal assistance to immigrants from the occupied Crimea and ATO area.

A reception office of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union is open in Kyiv to provide free competent legal assistance to immigrants from the occupied Crimea and the area of military operations in Eastern Ukraine. Reception of citizens takes place in the office of the Commissioner for human rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine at the premises of Almenda organization in cooperation with the Resource Centre for IDPs.

According to the lawyers of reception office, the topics of public appeals are very diverse. Moreover, requests are constantly changing so as the situation in the conflict zone. This, in turn, changes the needs of people experiencing hardship caused by the aggression of the neighbouring state.

“Since the beginning of the occupation, the vast majority of public appeals was about obtaining the status of internally displaced persons, receiving social benefits, subsidized housing, i.e. the people were coming to solve the most pressing household and financial issues. Eventually other legal issues emerged — transfer of business to the territory controlled by Ukraine, exercise of labour rights, accession to the heirship with regard to property in the occupied territory, completion of paperwork relating to retirement benefits, confirmation of disability, bank servicing for the immigrants, etc. If the first group of issues could be solved quite effortlessly, the second group required legal response, formation of the judicial and law enforcement practice, advocacy” — says Anna Rassamakhina, lawyer of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.

The lawyers of reception office managed to help about a thousand persons. The most common problem which the immigrants from Eastern Ukraine has been applying with recently, resides in compensation for damage caused to property and health in ATO area. A search for a viable solution for this issue is currently in progress.

Legal reception offices of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union are available almost all over Ukraine. The reception offices have established communication between each other, thus, whenever necessary, any public request will be directed to the appropriate lawyer for effective assistance.

“We have no major issues in providing legal assistance. We mean that there is a system of free reception offices, there is a possibility of informing the internally displaced persons of these reception offices, we have at least partial readiness for cooperation on the part of government authorities”, — says lawyer Anna Rassamakhina.

The immigrants from the occupied Crimea and ATO area can solve their pressing issues if they reach the lawyers of reception office by calling the helpline or visiting the reception office in person.

Contacts of Kyiv reception office of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union

Address: Office of the Commissioner for human rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (ground floor), 21/8 Instytutska Str., Kyiv.

Visiting days: Monday and Wednesday, from 14.00 till 19.00

Helpline: (050) 140-25-65 (Monday to Friday, from 10.00 till 18.00).