Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Vasyl Marmazov, outlined main tasks confronting the Ministry in the field of migration activities. He focused attention on the need to build operations of MIA’s relevant units in accordance with existing international law requirements ratified by Ukraine as well as with European migration services’ practices. This work can be expected to be efficient given close interaction with the UNHCR Office and with a number of nongovernmental international organizations. Vasyl Marmazov also briefly analyzed contemporary challenges existing in the Ministry’s law-enforcement activities such as ethnic minorities’ rights, combating racism and xenophobia, efficient prejudicial investigation, etc.

The new challenges in respecting human rights faced by MIA urge on more active cooperation with the human rights community, international organizations, and public associations uniting representatives of ethnic minorities living in Ukraine.

According to Ye. Levchenko, Advisor to the Minister, an important area of work for the Minister’s human rights assistants consists of monitoring of how human rights of persons detained and staying in militia’s specialized institutions are observed. Implementation of the decisions made by the Ukrainian MIA Board 25 July 2008, which dealt with these matters, showed that the chain of problems is being solved without any extra funding, by means of adjusting work and increasing attention to the detainees’ problems. At the same time, additional funds were allocated in all oblasts to carry out running repair and overhaul of temporary accommodation centers.

Oleh Martynenko analyzed activities of the Directorate for Monitoring of Human Rights in the Internal Affairs Bodies’ Work that had been established in January 2008. The Directorate is unique because, for the first time in the history of the Ukrainian internal affairs bodies, 40% positions of the Minister’s human rights assistants have been occupied by representatives of law-enforcement and public organizations. The goal of the Directorate’s activities is to adjust the system of departmental control for human rights observance in the work of internal affairs bodies in accordance with international standards of law-enforcement activities.

In its current work, the Directorate has accentuated on the implementation of the following strategic directions:

- counteracting tortures and cruel treatment;

- securing the rights of migrants and asylum seekers;

- counteracting racism and xenophobia;

- counteracting drug-related crime;

- improving activities of traffic militia.

International experts highly appraised establishment and work of the Directorate, which was pointed out during the recent OSCE Council in Warsaw. The above-mentioned areas of the Ministry’s work in the field of human rights protection secure reformation of the internal affairs bodies with account for European integration processes as well as allow building a management strategy pursuant to the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions.