UNIAN Human Rights initiative

The UNIAN Press Agency has announced the launching of a new weekly bulletin “UNIAN - Human Rights”.

At a press conference on 7 August, the UNIAN General Director Valery Nechyporenko explained that over the next six months until February 2008, the agency will be issuing the weekly providing information and analysis. It will gather, process and analyze information on the human rights situation in Ukraine and provide coverage on the work of human rights organizations and public councils attached to State ministries and departments. It plans to circulate this information via the central and regional mass media.

A special website is to be created with a focus on legal issues where human rights groups’ news will be presented in a popular, accessible and interesting form.

On a monthly basis UNIAN will be holding press conferences and roundtables on the issues of the project where key aspects of Ukraine’s development as a law-based and civic state will be presented for the consideration of the public and the media.

The Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Volodymyr Yavorsky warmly welcomed the initiative, calling it pioneering and noting that up till now the media had not highlighted human rights issues.

Yevhen Bystrytsky, Executive Director of the International Renaissance Foundation pointed out that Ukrainian politicians were not creating conditions for the development of civic organizations and a civic society which could demand accountability from the authorities. He therefore stressed the importance of this opportunity for civic organizations to inform the public about their work via the media.

The Editor of the new weekly Tetyana Pechonchyk explains that during the project UNIAN will be promoting legal knowledge among the public, as well as among the management and editorial staff of media outlets and popularizing the ideas and norms of a law-based society in the mass media. The latter will receive a channel of proactive, accurate and accessible legal information, particularly with regard to the work of human rights organizations and public councils which is at present much needed.

From information provided by the UNIAN Press Agency