Ukraine Reform Conference, held in Toronto on July 2-4, is a significant international event, which for the third time gathers more than 600 foreign delegations, international organization, entrepreneurs and civil society representatives. Its aim is to brief the world about Ukraine’s progress in reforms and simultaneously show the support of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic path. This is also a meeting point of the reforms’ visions.
A salient part of this mutual understanding is Toronto Principles – a visionary document of Ukraine’s reforms, based on the general view of more than 80 nongovernmental organizations, as well as the representatives of the private sector and active citizens. The Toronto Principles were developed with the experts of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, the biggest and institutionalized coalition of Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations, that has no analogs in the world. Along with the main participants of the conference, President Volodymyr Zelensky and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ukraine’s civil society was well-represented at the conference as a recognized driver for the reforms.
This conference happens in a very important moment for Ukraine – in between the presidential election on April 21 and the parliamentary election on July 21.
With the Toronto Principles, Ukraine’s civil society sends an important message to the government and parliament, that no matter who is in power, reforms should be irreversible. Moreover, we percept this document as a baseline for measurement of the future success of reforms. The Toronto Principles contain three parts, crucial for Ukraine:
Also, 12 sectoral policy briefs were developed, elaborating the main problems and concepts of their resolutions.
Attention to the judiciary reform now is probably as sharp as ever. After three years of the official start of the reform, a lot has happened. The High Anti-Corruption Court was created on a great demand of the civil society after the EuroMaidan Revolution that deposed President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Also, new and transparent criteria were developed in the judges’ competition for vacant positions while required constitutional changes were also introduced.
As a founder of the “CHESNO. Filter the Judiciary!” campaign, which was introduced simultaneously with judicial reform, I have to note that crucial issues are not resolved yet. We closely watch the competitions to the higher courts and set an ambitious goal – to create profiles of all the working judges of Ukraine. Now in our database of judges profiles is unified information about 2,500 judges as (out of around 5,500) and an assessment of their integrity in one place. Over 40 percent of the profiled judges broke at least one of the integrity criterion, developed by the CHESNO methodology. From this analytical perspective, we see that the declared renewal of the judicial reform has not happened yet.
That is why declared principles in the part of the judiciary reform underline the existing problems. Without resolving these challenges we can not move forward. Particularly, the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine and the High Council of Justice require drastic transformation, as these are the bodies which ensure the cleansing and renewal of the system. In our vision, civil society has to be a part of these bodies. However, not in the previous formats, in which the adverse decisions of the judges’ integrity, issued by the Public Integrity Council, were ignored by the High Qualification Commission and dishonest judges passed the qualification and continue to represent the face of the justice. Besides, civil society needs to be present in the bodies, which guarantee the punishment of the judges’ crimes and misbehavior.
In the complex resolution of the judiciary system flaws, we can not omit the questions of the bar reform and ensuring sufficient legal education. Also the reform of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which decides if the laws correspond to Ukraine’s Constitution affects all the spheres of the society’s life. Currently, there are questions to the integrity of some judges, who hold positions there. For instance, this results in the decisions, which don’t correspond to society’s demands for justice.
Among other principles, we should ensure accessibility of the justice, easily comprehensible communication of the judges, quick and sufficient execution of decisions and implementation of the IT-technologies to accelerate the speed of the procedures.
All this has to happen in order to restore in Ukraine the trust in justice. Without trust, even fair judiciary decisions can be perceived as in favor of someone’s interests. Full implementation of the Toronto Principles can ensure the rule of law in Ukraine, where everyone plays according to the same rules. As it has to be in a democratic society.
Principles on justice reform itself:
Ensure access to justice; the independence, integrity, and accountability of judges, prosecutors, and lawyers; continue to depoliticize the judiciary; increase the effectiveness of its renewal by empowering those that are most trusted by society (representatives of civil society and foreign experts); as well as relaunch the qualification assessment of judges whose integrity is in doubt; reform the bar; modernize legal education and rules of access to legal professions in accordance with international standards; enhance the functional capacity of law enforcement agencies through the introduction of international standards and approaches to conducting detective and secret activities; ensure the independence of the prosecutor’s office through its depoliticization; reform the penitentiary system so that it reduces the likelihood of recidivism and facilitates the resocialization of convicts.
Taras Shevchenko is director of the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law and co-chairman of the Council of the Reanimation Package of Reforms.