Diving centre for the disabled - Odessa

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Tempted as I am to speculate on the formation of the new Cabinet of Ministers in the forthcoming new parliament, the current Cabinet resigning en masse yesterday as required by law, thus allowing for a new Cabinet and reshuffle - I won’t - yet. Instead I will ease my way back into writing here with […]

CPT Report - Ukraine

CoE

The latest CPT, (or Council of Europe European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhumane or Degrading  Treatment or Punishment) has just been released relating to Ukraine. Just as grim a read as it was in 2009. It seems there have been no improvements under this government compared to the last one. One wonders […]

Answering some readers question from the “So now what?” post - Elections and ECfHR

ignorance

If I needed proof that people (bless you all) actually read what I write occasionally , aside from the website statistics and comments made, questions sent by readers is indeed such proof. Relating to this post written a few days ago, I have been sent several questions, and most aimed at these two paragraphs: “The […]

Whilst waiting for the dust to settle - The Gender Gap

WEF logo

Whilst waiting for the dust to settle from yesterday’s elections, here is an interesting survey from the World Economic Forum relating to “The Gender Gap.” When hovering the mouse over nations, it appears Ukraine seems to do rather well in comparison to EU CEE nations and a few EU Mediterranean nations as well. A bit […]

Renditions, Spooks and Rhetoric - Another incident in Ukraine

prisoner hood

Oh dear.  The international community are claiming to be in shock that Leonid Razovozzhayev managed to get spirited away from Ukraine where he was attempting to claim asylum, and reappeared in Russia some days later telling a quite harrowing tale of abduction, torture and false confessions. There seems no point in going into too much […]

Pouring oil on troubled waters - EU Ambassador to Ukraine

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The new head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, (Ambassador for want of a better analogy), Jan Tombinski, seems to be doing his very best to pour oil on the somewhat choppy waters between Ukraine and the EU in efforts to smooth matters between the two sides to some degree. He recently gave a press […]

6th EU Human Trafficking Conference

euro-lex

Today is something of a rushed post.  Yesterday was my birthday, a day when I spent much time being kissed by many people I would prefer not to be kissed by, and a day when I was not kissed by many people I would happily be kissed by.  Hmmm! Anyway, as you can imagine, there […]

Domestic violence - Council of Europe and Ukraine

dom vio

The world is full of good causes and those in need of assistance - regardless of whether a nation is developed, developing, or indeed not much more than a failed state. For me it has always been a bit of a dilemma what to support and what I won’t.  When I ran my companies in […]

When a “political prisoner” is not a “political prisoner”

political prisoner

Only a few days ago I wrote a short entry stating PACE/Council of Europe had eventually defined “political prisoner“. The definition is thus: “A person deprived of his or her personal liberty is to be regarded as a “political prisoner”: a. if the detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees […]

Council of Europe defines “Political Prisoner”

council of europe

Very quietly and without much fanfare, on Thursday the Council of Europe (PACE) eventually committed itself to a legal definition of who can be classified as a “political prisoner”. Needless to say it will have some ramifications for all CoE member states as well as the ECfHR, be those ramification great or small. It necessarily […]