Ukraine should initiate OSCE action standard how to get unfettered access to occupied territories – Ukraine’s Ombudsperson

Ukraine should initiate the development of such a document, which can be offered as a standard for OSCE in case if an OSCE mission is denied access to some occupied territory.

Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Valeria Lutkovska said this at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting HDIM2016, the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports from Warsaw.

The Ombudsperson noted that, despite critical comments towards Ukraine from different states on the situation in Crimea and Donbas, the largest signal was sent to OSCE.

“Let’s take a look at the session, dedicated to the protection of the rights of national minorities. The representatives of Ukraine talked there about the violations of the rights of Crimean Tatars. The representatives of the Russian Federation said there that the rights of Crimean Tatars were not violated. So today, instead of dialogue and a compromise on how to protect the rights of people on the peninsula in order not to describe it as “the peninsula of fear”, we get the conversation of people on both sides of the abyss. There is no organization between them that would actually deal with security and cooperation in Europe,” Lutkovska said

The Ombudsperson also stressed: “And this organization must have real tools to make, in this case, the Russian Federation, to open Crimea, to enable the respective missions for the protection of minority rights and other human rights be present in Crimea to see the situation and respond, even if having their own point of view on what is happening in Crimea. Or it should monitor smuggling weapons, ceasefire regime, and the like. It is not happening as well.”

Ukrainian Ombudsperson added that Ukraine could not stand by and must take the initiative itself.

During the HDIM2016 plenary sessions, the delegations from different countries had the opportunity to speak and to say about the existing problems in the field of human rights, security, civilized development. However, instead of dialogue, there often were mutual insults from different countries. In particular, Ukraine, in many cases, was criticized by the Russian Federation delegation.