There are two legislative initiatives that literally all those present agreed to support: 9103 on civil partnerships for same-sex and different-sex couples and 5488 on fair responsibility for crimes motivated by intolerance.

Ukraine is taking new, ambitious steps in human rights protection. Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, in cooperation with the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine – Kyiv, hosted a lengthy and informative roundtable discussion, bringing together the first sector – state institutions authorized to implement changes – and the third sector – civil society, which is the social engine of these changes.

 

The organizers announced the topic of the joint meeting as “Harmonization of Ukrainian legislation with European standards in the field of combating discrimination and ensuring diversity.” The litmus test for diversity implementation is the legislative and social attitude towards LGBTIQ+ people – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people.

 

That is why my colleagues and I from the National LGBTI Consortium spoke specifically about ensuring civil equality for LGBTIQ+ people, offering a whole package of steps – both for the day before yesterday and today and for tomorrow and the long term.

We were impressed by the highest level of representation, which was the only one possible in the current circumstances. On the governmental and ministerial side, the discussion was opened by Ms. Iryna Borovets, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Erlend Falk, Vice-Chair of the Council of Europe Office.

 

The First Deputy Speaker, Mr. Oleksandr Kornienko, literally broke into the flow of our event with a short keynote speech. Suppose the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine says that human partnerships for LGBT people are timely. In that case, it means there is political will in the parliament.

 

At the roundtable, a whole galaxy of MPs took the floor one after another, including Ms. Nelli Yakovleva, Ms. Yevheniya Kravchuk, Ms. Maria Mezentseva, Mr. Dmytro Hurin, Mr. Servant of the People – Mykola Stefanchuk – Constituency 187. The emphasis of the parliamentarians’ messages was different. From the perspective of an attentive listener, everyone is united by solidarity around human rights as a value and around European integration as a vector.

 

Instead, the parliamentarians state that many of their colleagues from the current IX conference still need to be ready to combat discrimination based on SOGI in the legislation. But “the road is made by the one who walks,” as Ms. Nelly, Chair of the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination / Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, rightly noted.

 

“The “ministerial” block of participants, including representatives of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, focused our attention on the fact that the state of Ukraine must nolens volens comply with the ECHR judgment, in particular in the case of Maimulakhin and Markiv v. Ukraine, which stated that there was institutional discrimination based on sexual orientation due to the impossibility of any legal recognition of family partnerships between people of the same documentary sex. What does this mean? The state will adopt a new legislative regulation on registered civil partnerships #RCP.

 

Ms. Margarita Sokorenko, Commissioner of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine for the European Court of Human Rights, and Mr. Pavlo V. Pushkar, Division Head at the Council of Europe DG Human Rights and Rule of Law, spoke about the need and prospects of Ukraine’s implementation of the ECHR judgments. Pushkar.

 

We must consolidate our efforts around draft law 9103, “On the Institute of Registered Partnerships,” submitted by MP Inna Sovsun.

 

It is vital that the Ministry of Justice, represented by its esteemed colleague, Ms. Deputy Minister for European Integration Liudmyla Suhak, has once again demonstrated its readiness to make efforts to finalize draft law 9103 after it is adopted as a basis in the 1st reading.

 

Over the past year, more than 400 discrimination cases have been registered in Ukraine, as stated in the speech of the Vice Ombudsman, Mykhailo Spasov. The Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights carefully records all hate incidents, including those motivated by homophobia and transphobia. In this sense, the Ombudsman is also in solidarity with both fundamental draft laws – on civil partnership (9103) and crimes motivated by intolerance (5488).

 

The Equal Opportunities for Men and Women Policy Cluster also made a powerful presentation at the event. The speeches of the Head of UN Women / UN Women Ukraine, Ms. Sabine Fraser-Guenes, and the Gender Policy Commissioner of our government, Ms. Kateryna Levchenko, give us confidence in two tracks: First, monitoring the observance of human rights for LGBTIQ+ people is becoming part of the UN Women cluster’s mandate, and second, the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine will include consideration of sexual orientation and gender identity as significant characteristics of a person.

 

Colleagues from the non-governmental sector focused on issues that may seem secondary to the general political mainstream. Still, they are definitely of paramount importance to our communities. Ms. Khrystyna Karpenko from Gender Stream and Ms. Anna Lytvynova from Insight LGBTQ NGO focused on specific human rights issues related to the protected characteristic of “gender identity.” For example, the problem of obtaining a duplicate higher education diploma under a new name due to a change in the gender marker in documents remains unresolved. The issues of military registration of trans* people, both trans women and trans men, are not sufficiently regulated.

Ms. Khrystyna, a representative of the Gender Stream civil movement, focused the audience’s attention on the extreme importance of the draft law 5488. Its promotion is one of the organization’s priorities, and its adoption should be considered an essential step towards harmonizing our legislation with European standards. This long-awaited law is vital for civilian and military LGBTIQ+ people,” Ms. Khrystyna emphasized. “Its undoubted advantages are that the draft law defines the very concept of “intolerance” and creates (improves) mechanisms for investigating crimes committed for reasons of intolerance. The head of Gender Stream, colleague Olha Poliakova, joined the roundtable online.

 

Ms. Iryna Zalialova, Deputy Head of the Human Rights Compliance Department of the National Police of Ukraine, emphasized the importance of draft law 5488 for the entire human rights protection, investigation, and fair trial system.

 

I want to add that the Verkhovna Rada has already considered Draft Law 5488 as a European integration bill on its agenda for the first quarter of this year. We are keeping our fingers crossed, continuing our behind-the-scenes work, and expecting a positive vote!

 

Colleague Anna Sharyhina, who joined the discussion on behalf of KyivPride, emphasized that despite the ongoing war that Ukraine has been waging for almost 10 years, we cannot put our lives on hold, so all the human rights needs of our communities should be fought for “here and now,” and the traditional events of the Pride movement will be appropriate for this purpose.

 

Colleague Tetyana Pechonchyk from the ZMINA Human Rights Center. The Center for Human Rights supported the revolutionary thesis about the need for a fundamental, moral revision of the basic anti-discrimination law “On the Principles of Preventing and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine,” which was adopted during the presidency of Yanukovych (2011-2012) and no longer meets the needs of the times.

 

Colleague Mr. Tymur Levchuk from the Transformation Communications Activity (TCA) Project USAID Ukraine – USAID Ukraine once again reminded respected government officials and NGO partners that, according to media monitoring, the Russian aggressor uses LGBT issues as a kind of anti-value in “justifying” its military attack on Ukraine and in “protecting family values” in the temporarily occupied territories.

 

Colleague Andrii Chernyshev, Head of External Relations and Advocacy Department at ALLIANCE.GLOBAL, emphasized that the adoption of two essential draft laws – 9103 and 5488 – will help improve public health among key populations, in particular among MSM (men who have sex with men), as the regulation of the family status of LGBTIQ+ people will have a positive impact on taking care of their own health and the health of their partner.

 

Suppose you have read or at least scrolled through this reporting and bureaucratic long-windedness to the end. In that case, I will add my theses that are relevant to the topic of the roundtable:

 

1. Concentrate efforts around draft law No. 9103 on registered partnerships. We have a chance to “guide” it step by step through the complex ladder of parliamentary advocacy.

 

2. To “push” the draft law 5488. It was introduced by the government at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; it is progressive and good; it can provide both the National Police and the judicial system with the tools to exercise fair responsibility for crimes motivated by intolerance, particularly those inspired by homophobia and transphobia.

 

3. Introduce fundamental changes to the law “On the Principles of Preventing and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine,” in particular, to expand the protected anti-discrimination grounds and clarify the forms of discrimination. The best option is to rewrite the law and adopt a new version. At the same time, the old draft law 0931, introduced back in 2015 and adopted in the 1st reading, should be withdrawn from consideration as outdated.

 

4. Adopt a new Labor Code (since we are still living under the 1972 code), guarantee non-discrimination on all reasonable grounds, including SOGI, and at the same time optimize liability for violations of labor law, including illegal harassment.

 

5. The conceptually new, radically modernized draft of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine, which has already been written in our country, should be further promoted. Still, at the same time, its sensitivity to the human rights needs of LGBTIQ+ people should be monitored.

 

6. We put the revision and modernization of demographic and family policy legislation on the agenda. We should think about fundamentally updating the Family Code itself (after all, the modern foundations of civil family law were laid in Ukraine in 1918-1921, when marriage registration was transferred from the Church to the state). It is urgent to adopt new legislation on assisted reproductive technologies and to extend the scope of their application to the social status of childlessness, including childlessness among LGBTIQ+ people.

 

The participants of the roundtable also voiced other good ideas and suggestions. The state and civil society can jointly implement everything necessary and valuable in the coming years during the term of the current Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the IX convocation and the coming years.

 

Many thanks to the organizers of the roundtable, who made it possible for a large number of prominent figures to be “in one place at one time”: Mr. Zoryan Kis, Ms. Zola Kondur, Ms. Yulia Melnychuk, Ms. Iryna Tyshkevych, as well as numerous student assistants, some of whom are studying international relations, such as Vitaliy Pashchenko, with whom we had the honor of meeting at other human rights events.

 

To be continued! The year 2024 has just begun, and the human rights trends of the year give us hope for the best state decisions and approaches!

 

In solidarity with the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine, the Office of the Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, the Secretariat of the National Council on TB and HIV/AIDS, LGBT Human Rights Center “Our World” / LGBT Human Rights NASH SVIT Center, Fulcrum UA – NGO Fulcrum UA, Sphere, Women Association, Gender Zed, LGBT+ Military, LGBT Association LIGA, Spectrum Kharkiv, Gay-Forum of Ukraine NGO.