16-05-2012
Cabinet of Ministers has registered in Supreme Council a bill on fight against discrimination on race, national and sex signs.
Elaboration of legislation on fight against discrimination is one of the tasks stipulated by Plan of Action on Liberalization of visa regimen for Ukraine by European Union.
The governmental bill relates such forms of discrimination as “decision, actions or inaction” directed upon the “limited rights of personality due to belonging to a definite race, colour of skin, religious or political beliefs, sex, age and other signs as well as persecution and incitement to such activities”. In accordance with the document, a human can address to the court or any authorized representative of Supreme Council on human right when feeling any display of discrimination directed against him/her.
However, newspaper “Ъ” says that representatives of public organization regard the law in draft to be half-baked and they are indignant that it is passed over to Parliament before its discussion has been completed. The President of International Woman Human Rights Centre La Strada-Ukraine, Ekaterina Levchenko points out that the main deficiency of the bill is in definition of the notion “discrimination”, which is too narrow. According to her words, in documents of UNO discrimination is considered not only as action or inaction, but as any indifference leading to encroachment on rights and freedoms.
“Offered variant will result in “discrimination” to be interpreted not in all cases. For example, the phrase of Premier Minister Nikolay Azarov “…there is no place for women in Administration…” was interpreted as valuation proposition. At the same time, Minister of Interior of France was fined for 2000 € for discriminatory expression as to persons of Arab ethnos” – she marked.
Experts confess that enactment of the bill on fight against discrimination is necessary because of its spread in our country. According to information of authorized person of Supreme Council on human rights, Valeriy Lutkovskyi, for example, women are not practically presented at the governing posts in the bodies of executive power – just six women are appointed as deputy ministers, 17 – deputies of the heads of Regional State Administrations. As it is reported by the general secretary of National Confederation of Labour Unions Petr Petrichenko, the women-workers of middle management earn 35% less than men. “Woman is more difficult to find job, thus she often works in addition to eight-hour norm”, – he stated and added that any citizen older 45 is harder to be employed in Ukraine.