Ombudsman to provide legal aid with support of UNBA - pilot project

The Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights has launched a pilot project to provide professional legal aid to citizens in five regions of Ukraine.

The project is being implemented in Zakarpatti The Ombudsman's Office explains that during the reception of citizens, there are sometimes cases when applicants need additional professional legal assistance (drafting claims, lawyer's requests, etc.), but for various reasons cannot use free secondary legal aid.

To ensure the right to professional legal aid, enshrined in Article 59 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the regional bar councils, with the UNBA's approval, will participate in restoring the violated rights of those citizens who apply to the Ombudsman. The lawyers will provide the necessary explanations and, in some cases, professional legal assistance.

It should be reminded that the UNBA's recently presented Report on topical issues of the functioning of the legal aid system in Ukraine notes that the deepening crisis in the relations between the state and the bar in the field of legal aid provision, long-term disregard for the UNBA's position has led to fundamental changes characterized by the loss of the primary focus on the person as the highest value by the legal aid system.a, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne and Khmelnytskyi regions under the Memorandum of Cooperation signed between the Ombudsman and the Ukrainian National Bar Association.

According to the agreement, lawyers will provide professional legal aid to citizens who apply for consultations during the reception of the Ombudsman's representatives in the regions.

At the same time, the constitutional and legislatively defined model of guaranteeing the right to professional legal aid to everyone includes a special provider of its provision - the Bar. And it is the advocates, as special entities that meet specially defined requirements, and the activities they carry out to provide legal aid, the quality of which is guaranteed by special procedures and mechanisms, that are the defining elements of this model of providing everyone with professional, not just any, legal aid.