The seminar “Access to justice in environmental matters’

On 21 March 2010, Environment-People-Law jointly with the Academy of Judges of Ukraine and with the support of Ukraine: Rule of Law Project of USAID organized the seminar “Access to justice in environmental matters” for judges from Lviv and Ternopil’ regions.

Within the seminar experts and representatives of NGOs talked about mechanisms of access to justice in environmental matters, barriers in access to justice and ways of overcoming them.

Among the problems outlined during the seminar there are the following ones: low awareness of citizens of their rights, unwillingness and inability of citizens to protect their rights in court, financial barriers in applying to courts, inadequate access to environmental information.

Participants of the seminar outlined the ways of overcoming the problem of the judicial system:
-    improvement of the system of state legal aid for citizens;
-    raising awareness of judges in the sphere of environmental legislation and international treaties in this sphere;
With this regard the following recommendations were given to the Academy of Judges of Ukraine:
-    to incorporate trainings on environmental issues to the curriculum of the Academy of Judges;
-    to conduct the survey of court decisions which contain references to the Aarhus Convention;
-    to make the list of institutions which are authorized to perform judicial expertise.

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