Legal Challenges under Martial Law: New Format of RJRCs events

Legal Challenges under Martial Law is a new format of events held by the Regional Justice Reform Councils (RJRCs) with the support of the EU Project Pravo-Justice.

On December 2, the first event of this series was held in the city Chernivtsi – a round table dedicated to topical issues of mobilization, travel abroad, and forced withdrawal of property.

The event was attended by lawyers – representatives of NextGen, Youth Committee of the Ukrainian National Bar Association; judges of district courts; academia; PEOs, representatives of state authorities and local self-government bodies; experts of the EU Project Pravo-Justice; and representatives of the Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, and Donbas RJRCs.

At the round table, the participants discussed the following:

• Problematic issues of legal regulation of draft deferment during the mobilization — in particular, lack of a clear list of documents to confirm the grounds for deferment, which results in different practices in the application of such grounds.
• Judicial protection of the rights of those subject to mobilization or those already doing military service — highlighting some general approaches applied by administrative courts when challenging refusals to grant a deferment or dismissal from military service.
• Peculiarities of travel abroad for fighting age males during martial law — lack of a clear list of documents and uniform practice when crossing the border in respect of volunteers, students, and other persons who have the right to draft deferment.
• Peculiarities of travel abroad for children under martial law — how to prevent abuses related to the simplified procedure, under which there is no need to have a notarized consent of another parent if the child is accompanied by one of the parents.
• Forced alienation or withdrawal of property under martial law — what problems arise in connection with understanding and application of these mechanisms, in particular with regard to the evaluation and compensation of the value of property.

We are grateful to the speakers and participants for sharing their experiences! The next step will be to hold an online event to discuss the developments with a wider range of participants.