Ukraine
Ukraine has submitted information on hate crimes to ODIHR. Ukraine's hate crime laws combine general and specific penalty-enhancement provisions and contain a substantive offence. Hate crime data are collected by the General Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Department on Sentence Execution and the State Statistics Committee.
How hate crime data is collected
Hate crime monitoring and data collection in Ukraine is carried out according to an instruction from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The recording protocol, amended by an order of the Minister of Internal Affairs in 2019, now enables the recording of the victim's perception of bias motivation, including race, nationality, religion or belief.
There is a Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations, indicating the preliminary criminal law qualification of the offence in accordance with the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The Register is maintained by the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine and operates according to the appropriate regulation. Preliminary legal qualification may change depending on the evidence obtained during the investigation.
Hate crime data is collected by the Main Investigation Department of the National Police of Ukraine based on information in the protocols on committed crimes or crimes in preparation, as well as in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations. The investigative departments of National Police Directorates for each region of the country have staff responsible for monitoring and identifying information about crimes that may indicate the presence of prejudice. This information is also sent to the Main Investigation Department of the National Police for compilation.
The police define hate crimes as committed on the grounds of racial, national or religious intolerance. In addition, records are kept of crimes committed on the grounds of prejudice against members of the LGBTI community and people with disabilities.
The National Police of Ukraine, when collecting information on hate crimes, requests information that it needs from other organizations and institutions, for example, the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine, or the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights. Statistical information on hate crimes is published annually on the official website of the National Police.
The Prosecutor's Office does not generate data on hate crimes because there is no precise definition of hate crime in existing Ukrainian legislation. Information can only be filtered according to articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which do not provide reliable information about hate crimes. Statistics on the judicial outcomes are provided by the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine. Statistical information is also based on separate articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine but does not reveal information on bias motivation in sentenced cases.
Official Data
National developments
The National Police adopted an Action Plan to prevent hate crimes for 2019. As part of the plan, hate crime monitoring groups have been created in police units.
The Human Rights Department and the Main Investigation Department of the National Police have worked with ODIHR to transform the internal Methodological Recommendations on Investigating Hate Crimes, launched in 2017, into a publication on Categorizing and Investigating Hate Crimes in Ukraine: A Practical Guide, launched in 2019, which is now to be translated into operational practice of the police and subsequent trainings for police officers.
International reports
No information is available.
Key observation
ODIHR observes that Ukraine has not reported on cases of hate crimes separately from cases of hate speech or discrimination.
