UNHCR awarded best experts in the field of statelessness eradication in Ukraine

UNHCR in Ukraine awarded 13 professionals from different regions of Ukraine who made great efforts to address statelessness and its risks in Ukraine in 2019.

The awarding was held in the frame of the 5th anniversary of the 10-year-long #IBelong campaign launched by UNHCR in November 2014 to address statelessness, a problem that often affects the most vulnerable and stigmatized people.

UNHCR estimates that at least 10 million people worldwide are stateless. About a third of them are children. In Ukraine, according to the UN Refugee Agency, about 35,000 are stateless or undefined, including people whose citizenship remained undetermined after the collapse of the Soviet Union and who still have Soviet passports, and other undocumented persons for various reasons, they have difficulty proving their ties with Ukraine. In addition, many Ukrainian citizens do not have birth certificates and passports, which puts them at risk of statelessness in the future. These include children born in a temporary government-controlled territory, as well as Roma who have never received a passport.

From June 2017 to September 2019, UNHCR and its non-governmental partner organizations identified and provided legal assistance to 2,064 undocumented persons in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Zakarpattya, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. In a total of 28 months, 304 persons received passports (36 of them from other countries); 101 people received birth certificates; 326 people received duplicate birth certificates due to their loss.

The UNHCR welcomes the improvements in addressing statelessness at the local level, in particular, which have been implemented in five regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Zakarpatska, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa regions. At a ceremony in Kiev on November 4, 2019, thirteen staff from the State Migration Service and the Ministry of Justice (DRACS) were rewarded by UNHCR for their active involvement and hard work in addressing statelessness:

Yevhen Mykytenko – Head of the Main Department of State Migration Service in Donetsk oblast
Olha Skrypnyk – Deputy Head of Kramatorsk department of state registration of civil status acts of the Main territorial Department of Justice in Donetsk oblast
Oksana Liashchuk Oksana Lyashchuk – Head of Mukacheve district department of State Migration Service in Zakarpattya oblast
Nataliia Kemeniash – Head of Beregvo district of Civil Registry of the territorial Department of Justice in Zakarpattia oblast
Nadiia Shvets – Head of Civil Registry of the Main territorial Department of Justice in Odesa oblast
Ihor Yavorskyi – Deputy Head of Suvorov district department of the State Migration Service in Odesa oblast
Kateryna Bondarenko – Deputy Head of Balakliia district department of the Main Department of State Migration Service in Kharkiv
Yevheniia Bohdanova – Deputy Head of Civil Registry of the Department of state registration of the Main territorial Department of Justice in Kharkiv oblast.
Tetiana Mashyna – Head of Ivankovo district department of the Central Inter-Regional Department of State Migration Service in Kyiv and Kyiv oblast
Stepan Pidruchnyi – Deputy Head of the Central Inter-Regional Territorial Department of State Migration Service
Mariana Bakai – Register at the Civil Registry Department of Podil district of the Main territorial department of Justice in Kyiv
Iryna Dubykivska – Head of department of Civil registry of the Main department of Justice and Notary of Ukraine
Oksana Chornous – Deputy Head of the Department for Temporary and Permanent Residence of foreigners and stateless persons (central office).

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