Survey on who most violates rights in Ukraine and who helps uphold them

When rights have been violated, a majority say that the most effective form of defence is in turning to influential relatives or contacts, and not to the state authorities. This was one of the results of a sociological survey presented at the forum “Overcoming poverty – the issue of defending human rights”

During the survey, the respondents were asked to assess the effectiveness of turning to different bodies over human rights infringements on a scale from 1 (no sense at all) to 7 (approaching them will have real impact).

The results showed that people were most confident of getting the necessary help by turning to influential relatives or contacts (5.4 on the scale). The effectiveness of approaching law enforcement agencies was estimated at 2.9, the Human Rights Ombudsperson – 3.3, bodies of local self-government – 3.03, the President – 2.87, the Verkhovna Rada – 2.54, the Cabinet of Ministers – 2.51.

Of nongovernmental organizations the most authority was deemed to be held by European Court of Human Rights (4.19).  Others ranked as follows: the mass media (3.88), criminal groups (3,62), domestic courts (3.31) nongovernmental human rights organizations (3.29).

Most often people’s rights are infringed when dealing with state bodies in order to receive permits or information (46,3% of those surveyed), in everyday life (38,3%), during contact with law enforcement agencies  (23,9%).

The sociological survey “The Level of human rights observance in Ukraine” was carried out by the Institute of Applied Humanitarian Research in 15 regions of Ukraine, with 1,211 respondents aged 18 and above, with an error margin of 1.7%.  The forum “Overcoming poverty – the issue of defending human rights” was organized by the Oleksandr Feldman International Centre for Tolerance and the UN Office in Ukraine.