The executive director of the Fund Igor Panevkin and the deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, president of the all-Ukrainian movement Russian-speaking Ukraine Vadim Kolesnichenko discuss capacities of the Fund to support compatriots abroad.
Vadim Kolesnichenko
I would like to ask you not to use the word “diaspora” when speaking about Ukraine. We have a lot of Russian-speaking citizens, who are form the nation, and in Ukraine Russian-speaking citizens are representatives of various ethnic groups. We do not consider ourselves as diaspora. We understand that there are countries where compatriots are living as diasporas. Therefore, the Fund should separate the countries of the CIS and other foreign countries, because parameters of legal assistance and estimation of life situations of compatriots abroad. I think the Fund should understand that depending on amount of Russian-culture citizens of a country, the system of offices for a personal control of the legal assistance provided in the territory of this or that country.
The main thing. I’m glad that we shift to understanding of effective spending of resources. Grants are very important to stop speculations among compatriots, to make allocation of resources transparent, understandable and accessible. The Fund will be the initiator and estimator of the situation in this or that country, and it will define the direction of human rights activists’ activity. The system of grants is new and very important for us, but its main aim is implementation of our ideas. It is organization of monitoring, organization of analysis of internal and international laws. Our work has proved that the professional analysis of the international duties of Ukraine and right using of these mechanisms can solve many problems.
First steps have been made, and they have been right. It is significant we are working together, and the results will be positive. We should use experience of human rights organizations and human rights activists. In Ukraine there are several people who have been dealt with legal assistance for 5-7 years, and they should be supported by the Fund.
Igor Panevkin
Establishing of the Fund is a new stage in human rights activity. First of all, today we have focused our resources at lawyers, legal procedures, while previously they were spread. The new stage is not only for the Fund, but also for human rights activists and coordinating councils, because today they receive a new instrument. It is a certain intellectual potential, which is connected with our expert-legal council, where experienced lawyers and human rights activists will work. But how can the Fund be used as an instrument? For example, we have a task to monitor the situation in human rights sphere in one or several countries. The Fund considers monitoring as a stable systemic analysis of a certain fragment of the social reality, i.e. human rights, for changing the reality for the better without violence. If we speak about different states, different human rights organizations, we will come to weird conclusions. From the point of view of one approach, one system, we will get certain results, but they could be different from the results in other country. We should define a common methodology, a common systemic monitoring, a common scheme of the analysis of human rights. Our colleagues have a new instrument now, but they have no experience.
Vadim Kolesnichenko
It is impossible to provide one system of legal assistance in different countries. Why? Because when we provide monitoring, we should use its results in practice.
Imagine Ukraine has about 20 various international duties in the humanitarian sphere, i.e. it participates in international affairs within the UN and the Council of Europe. If we monitor duties of Ukraine in the Council of Europe in the sphere of the Regional Languages and Minorities Languages Charter, we will get results that could be used within Ukraine for human rights protection. And organizational, financial and intellectual support of the central fund is needed.
However, for example, Kazakhstan hasn’t ratified the Regional Languages and Minorities Languages Charter, they have different international mechanisms. They have different agreements with the UN. For instance, the Children Rights Declaration. Every country has its own mechanisms, as not all countries take the same responsibilities.
Igor Panevkin
We have the law on compatriots, which defines the notion of “compatriots.” Probably it is not very clear, but it exists. And it is widely used in the sphere of simplified granting of citizenship. Of course, compatriots have more advantages here. For example, there are programs for compatriots only. And the definition of “a compatriot” is used there too. The Fund defines that a compatriot is any person who has a fallow feeling for Russia. We admit there could be situations when not compatriot gets our support. There are situations when a person, who is not our compatriot, contributes a lot to propaganda of the Russian culture and the Russian identity. Sometimes people have a strong fellow feeling for Russia, but they have no opportunity for taking part in arrangements held by coordination councils. For example, there are plenty of our compatriots in Germany. Coordinating councils hold arrangements for 500 people, and 300,000 of people cannot participate in them. Our Fund will consider certain cases and support people, especially if coordinating councils and Russian foreign facilities address to us for help.
