The Crimean Tatar Resource Center sent a report to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the topic: Creation of monitoring mechanisms at the national and regional levels for the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The report will be used to create an issue report to be presented by the Expert Mechanism at its annual session due to take place in July 2023. The document will also be finalized and submitted to the Human Rights Council at its 54th session in September 2023.
The CTRC provided information on how the Ukrainian state is actively working to implement the rights of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people: from the moment when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Constitution of Ukraine, where indigenous peoples are first mentioned in articles 11 and 92, until the moment when the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Law of Ukraine “About the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine”.
However, as the experts of the CTRC note, international control over the fulfillment by the state of its obligations is an important tool for the implementation of international standards in the national system. However, there is a negative practice in Ukraine when, when preparing reports to the UN Committees, UPR, etc., direct questions about indigenous peoples and their situation are ignored. An example is Ukraine’s latest report to the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
“Thus, despite significant efforts by Ukraine in the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there are still many problematic issues and a lot of work to achieve the final result. It is important that an institution be launched at the national level, the task of which will be to monitor the situation in the sphere of the rights of indigenous peoples”,- the report added.