MIA moves on combating ethnic profiling
According to Yury Belousov, Aide to the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Ministry has drawn up a draft normative act aimed at combating a selective ethnic approach in the work of the MIA.
Mr Belousov said that the draft had been prepared as part of a joint project with the British Council in Ukraine aimed at observance of human rights in police practice. The project is funded by the British Governments Strategic Programmes Fund via the UK Embassy in Ukraine. The Kharkiv Institute for Social Research and international specialists were also involved in the work.
Mr Belousov explained that the specialists had examined the normative legal base within the MIA from the point of view of its compliance with international standards on combating racism and discrimination. They analyzed the procedures which regulate the work of Internal Affairs workers and gave recommendations on how to better adhere to human rights standards.
He also mentioned that within the project an international human rights specialist had drawn up a training module on ethnic tolerance and had carried out a series of training seminars for 50 police officers who in future will share this approach with their subordinates.
The Second Secretary to the British Embassy in Ukraine, Jonathon Bateson stressed that the British objective was to help Ukrainian police become more European, effective and contemporary in their work. “The United Kingdom has always been and remains a strong supporter of Ukraine’s desire to move closer to the European Union. We believe that this aspiration is best achieved through practical steps”. He added that practical steps on reforming specific areas of life can achieve much more with regard to integration than political rhetoric.
The British Council’s Press Release quotes the views of Boiko Todorov regarding the fact that ethnic profiling is not just discriminatory, but also ineffective. His article “Nationalism and Crime: an artificial link” can be found here: http://khpg.org.ua/en/index.php?id=1266239044
The project ‘Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Discrimination from Ukrainian Police Investigation documents’ ran from September 2009 till February 2010.