Kharkiv Group for human rights protection informs
A year ago the USA and the countries of the Council of Europe handed 50 prizes ‘For democracy and civil society’. Each prize was 20,000 USD and it was handed to commemorate the 50 th anniversary of Marshall’s plan and the 40 thanniversary of the Rome Treaty. The prizes were given to organizations and private persons in the countries of Central and East Europe, as well as in the former USSR for outstanding contribution to the fight for democracy and human rights. Three prizes were given in Ukraine: personally to Semen Gluzman, to the Ukrainian lawyers foundation and to our organization, the Kharkiv Group for human rights protection. We find it proper to report, for what we spent the money.
Equipment for other human rights protection organizations
and pay for the communication$3835.66
Publishing three books by Vsevolod Rechitskiy: ‘Freedom and state’, ‘Essay
on politics’, ‘Constitutionalism: Ukrainian experience’, a book by Yuri
Poltavtsev ‘A white spacing on officers’ shoulder straps’ and the book ‘Human
rights: my personal opinion’ (essays of the participantsof the 1 stand 2 nd
all-Ukrainian competition for a better essay in human rights) $5985.86
Materials and equipment for the Kharkiv Group $6998.27
Repair and arrangement of the Kharkiv Group office $2385.46
Material aid to people who turned to the Kharkiv Group$575.60
Expenditures for bank services$219.15
We have given some equipment needed for the normal work to our colleagues in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sebastopol and Simferopol. In particular, we bought for them computers, laser printers, Xeroxes, modems and the like. We also paid the expenditures for E-mail of some human rights protection organizations. Then we published five books, mentioned above. We have sent them free of charge to all regional and university libraries and to the libraries of law schools (all in all we sent around about 300 copies of each book). Our readers, who want to get these books, may turn to our office.
The prize enable the Kharkiv Group to purchase a risograph of format A3 (and not A4 as it was planned in the grant from the National Endowment for Democracy), which greatly increased the productivity. Using the risograph, we decreased the cost of publications, and now the great part of our publications is printed on our own equipment. This year we have so printed all the books and all our periodicals.
A part of the prize was paid for repair and arrangement of our office, which enabled us to provide 12 work places to our full-time workers (eight more full-time workers still work outside the office). The Kharkiv Group rendered material aid to some people who turned to the group: many-children families, children who needed stationary medical treatment, servicemen who were crippled because of dedovshchina, recruits who had to be medically examined in order to specify their diagnose, some lonely pensioners who got into a critical situation.
Council of the Kharkiv Group for human rights protection