Seventh Periodic Report of Ukraine on Implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
In the second half of July 2020, the UN Committee against Torture (hereinafter – the Committee) should consider the Seventh Periodic Report of Ukraine on implementation of the provisions of the UN Convention against Torture and Cruel Treatment. We recall that the previous Sixth Periodic Report of Ukraine was considered by the Committee in November 2014 and the periodic reports are provided once in four years.
In early 2017, the Committee provided a list of 42 issues completely covering the problems of torture and ill-treatment to the Government of Ukraine. In November 2018 the Government had prepared a draft of the Seventh Periodic Report. The draft is available at https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=INT%2fCAT%2fADR%2fUKR%2f33135&Lang=en
This draft was prepared ahead of many important amendments in legislation and practice which took place in 2015 – 2018. However, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) has prepared the Shadow Report to the draft report of the Government and offers it to the reader. We hope that it will be useful for the governmental experts. The KHPG continues the tradition of commenting the periodic reports of the Government on implementation of the UN Convention against Torture. In 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2014 the KHPG prepared and published its Shadow Reports to the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Reports respectively.
The Shadow Report of the KHPG represents the answers to almost all 42 issues of the UN Committee against Torture. It covers a variety of issues of the respect of the Convention during November 2014 – August 2019 and it was prepared on the basis of its own information and the information got from the partner organizations and state authorities.
The Shadow Report of the KHPG is submitted to the UN Committee against Torture and it aims at comprehensive coverage of the issues of respect of the rights enshrined in the Convention and attraction of the attention of the Committee’s experts to the most actual problems in the sphere of their implementation which in our opinion are not reflected or which are incompletely covered in the draft report of the Government of Ukraine.