We are wasting time. Why is it necessary to simplify the procedure for registering births and deaths in the occupied territories

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The reintegration of Crimea and certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO) after their de-occupation is a multi-layered topic that raises more questions than answers, which both ordinary citizens of Ukraine and politicians with state officials are trying to avoid today.

Further reintegration of the de-occupied territories requires careful and painstaking work – the development of legal mechanisms that have never existed before, not only in Ukraine, but also in the world, as well as working with the consciousness of the residents of the temporarily occupied territories (TOT). “Simple solutions” do not work here, instead they only harm.

“There are all traitors. When we de-occupy, we will solve something.” Such and similar thoughts can be heard when it comes to post-war life at TOT. A small number of Ukrainian citizens think about the duration and scale of work with the temporarily occupied territories, and even fewer are really ready to do something about it.

Unfortunately, many may have an internal resistance to solving the issues of the de-occupied territories, because “why after exhausting battles, lost lives of defenders, everything that Ukrainians had to go through, we will spend time, energy, money and other resources on such insignificant things as administrative procedure for registration of birth at TOT?”.

This position is quite understandable from the point of view of a person who hid loved ones, sat in shelters and has been living in the conditions of a terrible full-scale war for over a year and a half.

However, the state cannot assume this. Our soldiers are at the front, in particular, to raise Ukrainian flags in Sevastopol, Simferopol, Donetsk and Luhansk. It is important to develop and approve a balanced state policy for the reintegration of the occupied territories. No, it will by no means be easy and conflict-free for all participants.

Despite the occupation, Ukraine must take care of these territories, so it is Ukraine that will have to overcome the difficulties of reintegration after their liberation.

Ignoring and delaying is the main approach of the authorities today. Bills on the reintegration of TOT are lost at the stage of consideration in committees. The public debate does not even begin.

You can list a long list of issues that need to be resolved now. For example, what to do with real estate transactions that took place since the beginning of the occupation. There are no answers yet. Another question is what to do with acts of civil status that took place on the TOT, that is, in Ukraine and with citizens of Ukraine.

Currently, there are no reliable data on the number of births and deaths of Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories since 2014 and it is impossible to obtain them. However, we are talking about millions of facts of births, marriages and deaths, which should be entered in the Ukrainian registers of the RACS bodies, and which cannot be registered now, except to fulfill the court’s decision.

It is impossible to register the facts quickly, because their recognition takes place only in court, through a complex, long and expensive procedure. Few have access to this procedure in the controlled territory. Courts are overloaded with the same type of cases and cannot ensure their high-quality consideration. The “capacity” of Ukrainian courts is orders of magnitude less than the actual number of births and deaths, not to mention marriages.

The Free Legal Aid (FLA) system also cannot meet the demand for these actions, especially in a period of full-scale war. Therefore, the procedure for registering acts of civil status out of court is extremely logical and necessary, at least for simple cases when the situation is completely clear.

This is a very urgent problem, especially after the start of illegal mobilization to the Russian occupation forces in September of last year. Perhaps the men would like to leave the occupied territory, but due to the child’s lack of documents, the whole family remains in the TOT. This is a purely pragmatic argument in favor of the administrative procedure of birth registration, because the more Ukrainian men leave the TOT, the fewer will be forcibly mobilized into the Russian Armed Forces.

There is another important aspect that those who are not directly involved in the process of obtaining court decisions do not think about. There is an established judicial practice, when judges in their decisions recognize only the fact of the birth of a child to a mother, not taking into account the fact of marriage in the occupied territory. Thus, in order to comply with court decisions, a huge number of applicants become single mothers, to whom the state must provide additional social support and, accordingly, spend taxpayers’ money on it.

Ukraine is losing precious time

Currently, the draft law No. 9069 on the introduction of extrajudicial (administrative) procedure for registration of births and deaths that took place on the TOT is under consideration in the parliament. Such a procedure will be introduced sooner or later, because it is impossible to register all the facts of births and deaths that have taken place at the National Register of Citizens since 2014. This is impossible both during the occupation and after its end.

However, currently the legislator is categorically against the adoption of this law. The reasons are different, but it is worth understanding that we are wasting time instead of developing effective legal mechanisms. This time could be used to develop tools for shortening the transition period in the de-occupied territories, work for the future.

Now everything is going to the point that after the deoccupation these territories will find themselves in a legal vacuum, without ready-made legal mechanisms and even without an understanding on the part of the state authorities of what these mechanisms should be. The consequences are disorder and chaos, which will certainly affect the whole of Ukraine. Large communities in which people cannot realize their basic rights, integrate into society, become the basis for the development of destructive ideas and social practices, the spread of crime.

Therefore, it is logical to expect from the specialized committee of the Verkhovna Rada proposals on the substance of the proposed norm, wording, and for now it remains only to hope for the adoption of draft law 9069, as well as for the fact that the legislator and other powerful subjects will realize these tasks and begin to solve them instead of endlessly repeating about “not on time”, or that there are only unworthy collaborators left at TOT. Whoever is there – we have to solve problems that will not disappear by themselves and plan our future.

Anna Rassamakhina, lawyer of NGO KrymSOS, specially for UP. Life

Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.

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