For the first time in the independent Ukraine history the Verkovha Rada had registered a draft Law on the police No. 1692-1, which meets the civil society demands and was positively assessed by the international organizations experts. The document was developed jointly by the experts of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, police officers having practical experience of work, experts of the Secretariat of the Commissioner of the Verhovna Rada on Human Rights and MPs.  Thus, according to the authors, it is partially based on practical experience and would provide solutions to the existing problems in the police system, and from the other side it is not a politically biased product of the Ministry of Interior, as many of the previous “pseudo-reforms” used to be.

One of the draft law authors, Member of Parliament of Ukraine Viktor Chumak (Petro Poroshenko Bloc), explains: “Two reforms are essential for Ukraine — the judiciary reform and the police reform. Without them other reforms will not be able to operate efficiently. For many years Ukrainian police (called the “militsiya”) acted as a suppression tool against political opponents and a device to extort money from the businesses. We need to finally target the police activities  to the  protection of civil rights and freedoms. We should substitute the Soviet-style operating rules of the police along with Soviet laws with contemporary standards and appropriate high-quality legislative framework. We should ultimately transform the ministry of police in the European-style Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior should be charged with developing the state policies in the relevant field rather than give orders to patrol officers and district inspectors. ”

The problems of Ukrainian police may be solved only by implementing a fundamentally new, unbiased and transparent approach to staff appointment procedures on all levels, as well as introducing an efficient mechanism for processing of claims against the violation of the citizens’ rights by police officers with civil society involvement. Having solved these two issues and increased the police officers’ salary, the state may consequently gain a professional cohort of law enforcement officers and decrease corruption among them. “This draft law is one of the very few draft laws in the history of our country which received generally favorable assessment by the experts of the three European institutions — OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Human Rights Directorate of the Council of Europe and EU Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform in Ukraine. That is, while developing this draft law we were considering not only the need to solve urgent problems in the country, but the sustainability of the law and its compliance with the best international standards”, – says Oleksandr Banchuk, another author of the draft law, Reanimation Package of Reforms expert.

“Police reform is probably the one most expected by the society. It was pending not for year or two, but since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, from which our country has inherited this Soviet-style police (“militsiya”).  Since that time promises were plentiful, but real steps towards the reform were scarce. Unfortunately, we have heard enough promises from the new government too. But now it’s time to get down to business”, summarized one of the draft law authors, Member of Parliament Pavlo Kostenko (“Samopomich”).