During
2024, the Human Rights Defender was sent a draft package of 173 normative legal
acts related to human rights and freedoms. The Defender, taking into account
international standards and legal practice, submitted 226 considerations on
them, including not only criticism of problematic draft regulations, but also
specific recommendations for their amendment.
The
analysis of the HRDO staff shows that during 2024, almost 70 percent of the
Defender’s considerations regarding the draft packages submitted to the
Defender for an opinion and included in the agendas of ministerial committees
and Government sessions were adopted by the competent authorities, and
appropriate amendments were made to the drafts based on them.
During
the year, the Defender presented considerations on a number of important
drafts, which also became the subject of wide public discussions, including the
Law "On Prevention and Protection of Domestic Violence" and the
package of related laws, the procedure for providing care and social
rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities, the increase in the tax
burden for advocacy services, as well as draft amendments to laws and other
legal acts related to freedom of information, personal data protection.
The
Defender highly appreciates the fact that although the main part of the
considerations presented by the Human Rights Defender are critical, state
bodies take them into account in the majority of cases and make appropriate
amendments to the drafts.
This
circumstance contributes not only to the improvement of the quality of
legislation, but also to the more effective implementation and protection of
human rights.
Despite
the above, there are some fundamental considerations of the Human Rights
Defender regarding several drafts, based on which no changes were made to the
draft legal acts. Although the Defender also uses other mechanisms in the
mentioned situations, —such as submitting applications to the Constitutional
Court— it is important that the problems are fully resolved at the very initial
stage, by amending the draft regulations.
Based
on the application of the Human Rights Defender, for example, the
Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional one of the regulations of the
Law on Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights, which caused problems from
a human rights perspective.
It
should also be noted that there are exceptional cases when individual drafts
related to human rights were not sent to the Human Rights Defender for an
opinion. Although the problem was resolved as a result of communication with
the competent state bodies, the Defender attaches importance to ensuring that
such individual cases are also excluded.
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