In the near future, the video monitoring system “Custody Records” will work in five more areas
This was discussed today, May 6, during a working meeting of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the National Police with representatives of the OSCE.
As Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Kateryna Pavlichenko noted, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is actively developing and implementing the Custody Records system: “This is indeed the system that will help us monitor human rights in detention and prevent police from exceeding their powers.”
According to her, the Ministry of Internal Affairs builds its activities on the basis of respect for human rights and ensures the protection of society from violence, discrimination, manifestations of intolerance and any other violations.
“We introduce new practices, explore the best international experience and are always open to cooperation with international agencies,” said Kateryna Pavlichenko.
The activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Police in the field of human rights are a priority and are developing dynamically. This was stated in turn by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Tatyana Kovalchuk.
“The National Police has created a specialized Department of Migration Police, which deals with issues of combating trafficking in human beings, children, as well as issues of combating illegal migration. We work to prevent hate crimes. In particular, the draft law on combating manifestations of discrimination will strengthen responsibility for crimes committed on the grounds of intolerance and those related to discrimination against national minorities,” the Deputy Minister noted.
Tatiana Kovalchuk reminded that in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs there are the Office for Monitoring Human Rights Observance and the Office for Human Rights Protection.
“We need to consolidate efforts with the OSCE on training programs and trainers competent in human rights,” she added.
Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Matteo Mekacci said that his organization cooperates with various institutions to ensure and promote the implementation of human rights. And one of the main directions of this work is precisely the training of law enforcement officers.
“It is very important for us to develop a partnership with Ukraine. We work intensively with 57 OSCE member countries and pay special attention to cooperation with law enforcement agencies. We also pay a lot of attention to training and professional training of law enforcement officers in ensuring human rights,” he said.
In turn, the head of the Human Rights Compliance Department of the National Police of Ukraine Ruslan Goryachenko said that the Custody Records system, introduced last year, provides not only video surveillance, but also the formation of a file of the detained person. That is, it makes it possible to track all the actions of the police and the detainee.
“The system has already worked in temporary detention centers for three years and has shown results: the number of complaints against police officers has decreased several times. Now we are implementing this system in departments. We are forming a comfort zone for the detained person,” he said.
According to him, “Custody Records” has been introduced in Kharkiv, and will soon be scaled to Chernihiv, Odessa, Lviv, Vinnytsia and Ternopil regions.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
PHOTO by Mykola Anatskogo
