FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY - Article 19

ARTICLE 19GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR FREE EXPRESSIONpositive features in the Law, including a guarantee of the right to obtain information (Articles 5 and9); 153 an obligation on State institutions to provide information upon request (Articles 10 and 32);provisions for an appeals system (Articles 35 and 48); a right to request government-held informationconcerning oneself (Article 23); a duty for public bodies to proactively disseminate information(Article 29); and sanctions on those who violate the Law (Articles 35 and 47). Article 28 stipulatesthat the freedom of information regime should be supervised by the Verkhovna Rada and Cabinet ofMinisters of Ukraine.However, the Law has several serious shortcomings. 154 There have been calls for it to beamended for greater compliance with international standards on freedom of information, and for theinclusion of more detailed and clear freedom of information provisions that could more effectivelyregulate the flow of information. In co-operation with ARTICLE 19, in 2002 the Kharkiv Group forHuman Rights Protection (KHPG) started developing proposed amendments to the Law onInformation and then campaigned for their adoption. However, following the Orange Revolution andthe change of government, this process had to be re-started. In mid-2007 the Ministry of Justicedecided once again to produce an outline for a new freedom of information law. However, given thatthere was another change of government following the elections in September 2007, a final version isunlikely to appear before 2008.4,3 !" .The main environmental law in Ukraine is the Law on Environmental Protection. 155 In relation toaccess to environmental information, it establishes that:every citizen has the right to access, following an established procedure, full and truthful information onthe state of the environment and its impact on the health of the population (Article 9(1)(f).Following ratification of the Aarhus Convention, the Law on Environmental Protection wasamended 156 to include the notion of ‘environmental information’, defined at Article 25(1) as anyinformation in written, audiovisual, electronic, or other form on:• the state of the environment or its elements – land, water, subsoil, atmospheric air, flora and faunaand their pollution levels;153For citizens of Ukraine, State bodies, organisations and associations of citizens (Article 32(4)). The Statebody must inform the applicant within 10 days as to whether it will satisfy the information request. The Statebody will then have a month to fulfil its task (Article 33).154 See Section 4.10 below.155 Law ‘On Environmental Protection’, 25 June 1991, No. 1264-II (last amended in April 2007). All laws areavailable in Ukrainian at http://zakon1.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/laws/main.cgi.156 In November 2002.For Internal Use Only. Is Post-Chornobyl Ukraine Ready for Access to Environmental Information?ARTICLE 19, London, 2007")