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Indirect Discrimination of Roma by the officials of the Executive Bodies. The Tunde’s Case

Discrimination of Roma by the officials of the Executive Bodies

It is undeniable that nowadays for national minorities in Ukraine are not provided the full conditions for life and development of their communities. Moreover, in the 21st century in Ukraine such a shameful and unacceptable for a civilized society thing as discrimination on racial grounds is spread. Ukrainian authorities convince Europe that cases of direct discrimination in the state are infrequent. At the same time, the reality cannot be hidden: the representatives of the national minorities in Ukraine are constantly exposed to indirect discrimination. And more often suffer from it the representatives of the Roma communities.

To Mukachevo Human Rights Center applied the representative of the Roma settlement David Tunde Geizivna, born in 1981. Her mother – David Amalia Deziderivna died. She did not address to the body of state registration of civil status on the registration of her birth.

According of the Part 4 of Article 13 of the Law of Ukraine “About state registration”, the ground for the state registration of a birth of a child are the state documents in the sphere of health care, which confirm the fact of a birth of a child. In case of a birth of child outside the health care institution, the document establishing the fact of birth of a child is issued by a health care institution that held the examination of a mother and a baby. In case, if such examination was not held, the document confirming the fact of childbirth is issued by the medical consulting commission in the order, established by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The medical consulting commission issues a document confirming the fact of childbirth in case of establishing the fact of childbirth. In case of absence of a document of health care institution or medical consulting commission, confirming the fact of childbirth, the ground for holding the civil registration is court decision of establishing the fact of childbirth”.

The fact of her birth is supported by a medical certificate.

David Tunde applied to the department of civil registration for the state registration of birth, but she was denied because the state registration of birth of a child who has reached the age of 16 can be carried out on her written request with the presentation of a passport.

Turning to the migration service at the place of residence to obtain a passport, David was denied, because, according to the order of registration and issuance of a passport of citizen of Ukraine, approved by Order of Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine on 13.04.2012 No. 320 to obtain a passport person shall submit a birth certificate.

Considering the above, birth registration could be conducted on the basis of a court decision establishing the fact of birth.

On the content of paragraph 7 Part 1 article 256 of the GIC Ukraine, the court considers case on the fact of birth of a person at a certain time in case of failure of registration by the state civil registration of birth.
The lawyer of the Mukachevo Human Rights Centre has prepared a statement to the court to establish the fact of birth.

The court established the fact of the birth of David Tunde Geizivna. However, referring to the department of civil registration in Mukachevo for the state registration of birth, she was denied because of the reasoning and the operative part of the court decision allowed slip instead of “Geizivna” Unknown “Gneizivna”, and instead “Deziderivna” stated “Dziderivna”.

The lawyers of our Center prepared an application to the court for the correction of clerical errors in the judgment, since, according to art.219 of the Civil Procedural Code of Ukraine, the court may on its own initiative or at the request of persons who take part in the process, rectify the judgment in clerical or arithmetical errors.
Court decision agreed to amend the judgment, and then the registrar department conducted state registration of birth.

According to Article 18 of the Law of Ukraine “On state registration of acts of civil status” about the fact of the state registration of civil status act should be issued a certificate.

Taking into account the generally accepted fact that the government’s attitude to the problems of national minorities is a clear indicator of the civilized state and society, we can conclude that the situation in Ukraine is far from ideal. Extraordinary level of anti-Roma trends, patterns and practices of human rights violations against Roma and general intolerance for such actions is the result of the fact that the attitude towards the Roma as pariahs was never recognized by the Ukrainian authorities as a breach of human rights, despite a decade of efforts of the civil society to change that situation. The attention to the rights of Roma in Ukraine is still in informal activities, in spite of the acute nature of the problems and related acts.