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The Constitution of Ukraine guarantees legal aid to everyone.
The same Constitution says that in certain situations legal aid is provided
free of charge…
But how frequently does it happen in life when the Constitution states
one thing, and another thing happens in reality: it is very difficult
to receive legal aid free of charge. The main reason is the same that
turns "good law" into a "bad law" - absence of budget
financial aid.
But now, 7 years after ratification of the Constitution, three laws that
offer to establish order on the market of legal aid services and ensure
the right for free legal aid were ratifies at once. The projects were
developed by the Ministry of Justice, Center of political and legal reforms
and people's deputy Mr. Aleksandr Zadorozhnyy. All three projects were
discussed in the end of February at the roundtable in Kiev with participants
from scientists, representatives of the Bar Association of Ukraine, Ministry
of Justice, the Parliament and non-governmental organizations.
Attorneys were absolutely flat: those who do not have the license to provide
legal aid, can not offer legal aid services even if they are free of charge.
Their argument: there are 20,000 attorneys in Ukraine who are ready to
offer their services for decent price. But the problem is that the State
does not have any money to cover legal services for poor people.
So what can be done here? The Ministry of Justice bill offers to give
licenses to all attorneys who have their practice. They also offer to
organize the head this entire process. We can only imagine, how much they
will be able to "earn" for granting or not granting a license
to ALL lawyers of Ukraine.
The Co-Head of Kharkiv human rights group Mr.Yevgeniy Zakharov asked the
participants of the roundtable, Why is nobody asking those people who
we are writing this law for? And everyone understood that only non-governmental
organizations who have provided numerous consultations over the past years
take care of this poor people without any aid from the State.
Let me give another example. Two years ago a judge called Kherson Charity
and Health foundation and asked us to provide legal aid to a plaintiff.
The plaintiff turned out to be a woman with mental disease whose relatives
deprived her of her real estate.
Thus woman spent about one year on the street when someone advised her
to go to the court. The plaintiff smelled bad, could hardly write and
hardly spoke. The workers of public consultation at the Foundation showed
her, dressed and gave food. Then they spent some time asking questions
and trying to understand what had happened, and then they collected all
documents. Then they composed a claim and sent it to the court. And now
a question for attorneys: are they ready to buy soap, shower their client,
but new cloths and spend hours trying to receive necessary information
for this case? How much would an attorney want for this kind of job!?
But as the result our client won the case and moved to her house from
the street…
In 2003 the public consultations of the Foundation were provided to 2447
poor people, attorneys composed over 427 documents, 36 poor people won
their cases in court with our help. 7 claims were admitted at the European
Court for Human Rights and one case is already in the process. And there
are hundreds of such places with public consultations in Ukraine.
And now let's imagine that deputies vote for the new law "About free
legal aid", NGO workers will be prohibited to provide legal aid,
attorneys won't receive their money and all lawyers will need a license
- what will be next?
Aleksandr Burmagin
Lawyer at the Charity and Health Foundation
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