Senior lecture Maria Kuntsevych took part in the Conference “Challenge without Response: Hate Crimes against LGBT People in Ukraine” organized by LGBT Human Rights Nash Mir Center and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union was held in Kyiv on February 23.
The conference was attended by over 150 lawyers, human rights defenders, LGBT activists, employees of the National Police of Ukraine, representatives of other public and governmental organizations, diplomats, and politicians. Welcoming speeches to the participants of the event were made by UHHRU Executive Director Oleksandr Pavlichenko, General Rapporteur for the Rights of LGBTI people of the PACE Piet de Bruyn, a representative of the Ukrainian Ombudsman Aksana Filipishyna, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament Svetlana Zalishchuk, representatives of the British and Canadian embassies as well as, through a video message, by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks.
The conference was long and hopefully fruitful. All participants emphasized the obvious urgency of strengthening the fight against hate crimes against the background of a sharp rise in aggressive homophobic attacks on LGBT events, organizations and individual activists in Ukraine in recent years. They discussed, in particular, the practical problems faced by investigators and judges in investigating hate crimes against LGBT people – in our opinion, it was very important that the conference was attended by representatives of the investigative offices from all regions of Ukraine as well as lawyers who face these issues directly into their daily work.
The conference also adopted appeal to the Ukrainian authorities.
