FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY - Article 19

ARTICLE 19GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR FREE EXPRESSIONEcoPravo-Kyiv on institutional transparency found that the national budget and the StateEnvironmental Fund have no funds allocated for public participation initiatives. 221 Indeed, the costs forpublic hearings, round tables and seminars are frequently covered by international projects and grants.Although the Law on Environmental Protection requires that the professional qualifications of publicofficials with regard to granting public access be enhanced, 222 hardly any resources have beenallocated for training officials. Severe lack of investment in the court system is also a major problem,affecting the capacity of the judiciary to protect citizens’ rights, including the right to information. % %Systems to provide information are still in their infancy. Some ministries do respond to informationrequests, but there are few mechanisms (and little office culture) to proactively disseminate variouscategories of relevant information.Although some information is accessible in electronic form through official websites, this isnot sufficient in a country where most people have no access to the Internet. Moreover, websites areoften incomplete and the potential of the Internet as an information dissemination and consultationtool are thoroughly under-utilised. In September 2007, many links on the homepage of the MEP werenot functioning (for instance ‘news’, ‘forum’, and ‘environmental passports of oblasts’). There wereonly two documents in the section ‘legislative and regulatory acts’. Five recent decisions on EIAswere posted but no information on older or ongoing EIAs could be found. There was also no publicinformation on how to provide input to EIAs.Many systems that served for both information gathering and dissemination were lostfollowing the collapse of the USSR and the abolition of many of its institutions (such as the collectivefarm system). These have yet to be replaced by other channels. Consequently, the authorities are nowfacing problems both in disseminating necessary information effectively, especially to ruralpopulations in remote areas, and in gathering information to inform decision-making processes. Forinstance, there are guidelines for farmers on how to avoid the negative impact of radioactivity on theirfarm produce (such as guidance on what crops should be planted in certain areas and which onesavoided, and where they should or should not graze animals), but the authorities find it difficult todisseminate such information effectively and to monitor whether it is being observed.The monitoring of radioactive contamination at the local level is carried out in all oblasts bylocal representatives of central government ministries (the Department for the Monitoring ofRadioactive Contamination Levels of the Agrarian Ministry, the Ministry of Health and the MEP).221 EcoPravo-Kyiv, Assessment of the Access to Information, Participation in Decision-Making, and Access toJustice in Ukraine, 2006222 At Article 7. See Section 4.5.For Internal Use Only. Is Post-Chornobyl Ukraine Ready for Access to Environmental Information?ARTICLE 19, London, 2007&'