
The Role of Courts in Environmental Rights Protection in the Context of the State Policy of Ukraine
Summary: – 1. Introduction. – 2. State Policy of Ukraine for Ensuring Environmental Rights. – 3. Environmental State Policy of Ukraine and Environmental Rights Protection. – 4. ECtHR Case-Law in Environmental Matters: Cases v. Ukraine. – 5. National Case-Law on Access to Justice on Environmental Issues. – 6. Concluding Remarks.
Abstract
The protection of the environmental rights of citizens is an important issue for the domestic and foreign state policy of Ukraine. Although environmental rights are formally recognised and enshrined in law, they fail to be implemented in practice. This indicates the imbalance and lack of effective political and legal mechanisms for an appropriate system of measures to create conditions for exercising environmental rights and interests, their protection, and restoration, as well as to assure environmental awareness and culture.
In light of these general considerations, this research article aims to examine the current issues concerning access to justice for protecting environmental rights through the lens of the state policy of Ukraine and its real application to ensuring such protection. Accordingly, the underlying tasks of the article are: to analyse how meaningful and comprehensive the provisions of approved strategic documents are; to analyse the cases of the ECtHR against Ukraine in environmental matters; to study the national case-law concerning access to justice on environmental rights protection and whether they correspond with the state policy areas of ensuring environmental human rights; to analyse how efficient the mechanism of their protection in Ukraine is and whether conditions for equal access to court in environmental cases are created; to find and illuminate the current state policy gaps that might threaten the effective observance and enforcement of environmental human rights; to formulate theoretical and practical suggestions for their further improvement.
About Authors
Ackowledgments
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the reviewers of the article for their remarks and recommendations.
Conflict of interest
The authors have declared that no conflicts of interest or competing interests exist.
Contributors
Both authors contributed equally to the intellectual discussion underlying this paper, literature exploration, writing,
data collection, analysis, and interpretation, reviews, and editing, and take responsibility for the content of the paper.
Anisimova Hanna
PhD (Law), Assoc. Prof. of the Department of Environmental Law,
Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Kharkiv, Ukraine
g.v.anisimova@nlu.edu.ua
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0579-7007
Kopytsia Ievgeniia
PhD (Law), Assoc. Prof. of the Department of Environmental Law,
Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Kharkiv, Ukraine
ye.m.kopytsya@nlu.edu.ua
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2477-686
References
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6. Sakara N ‘The Applicability of the Right to a Fair Trial in Civil Proceedings: the Experience in Ukraine’ 2021 1(9) Access to Justice in Eastern Europe 199–222
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H Anisimova, I Kopytsia ‘The Role of Courts in Environmental Rights Protection in the Context of the State Policy of Ukraine’ 2021 2(10) Access to Justice in Eastern Europe 164–176. DOI: 10.33327/AJEE-18-4.2-n000066