Residents of the temporarily occupied territories of the Lugansk, Donetsk regions and Crimea, as well as temporarily displaced persons when issuing passports, if they are not in the register of voters, the migration service employees do not enter the place of registration of their permanent residence in the passport data. This problem is most often faced by Ukrainians aged 14-16, who for the first time receive passports of Ukrainian citizenship.
The Crimean human rights group was approached by a Crimean woman. Her fourteen-year-old son was born in Crimea and in 2014, after the beginning of Crimea’s occupation by Russia left to Kiev with his parents, where the family lives in a rented apartment. Parents are registered in Crimea. The teenager applied for an “internal” passport. But the migration service refused to include in its passport details the place of registration.
“The absence of a residence registration in the passport not only discriminates underage of Ukraine who have left or stayed in the temporarily occupied territory, but may become an obstacle to their rights (the right to education, free medical care, use of banking services, etc.). ), – explains the expert of the Crimean human rights group, lawyer Yuri Grishin.
The State Migration Service of Ukraine in response to the official request of the CHRG reports that certificates issued by illegally created authorities in the temporarily occupied territory are not recognized in Ukraine. In this situation, according to the DMSU, for entering information about the place of residence in the passport of a citizen of Ukraine, information from the State Voter Register is required, which can be used to record such information in the passport on the basis of Part 3 of Article 6 of the Law “On ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens and the legal regime in the temporarily occupied territory”.
“In the absence of such information, it is not possible to register residence in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine,” the migration service said. But there can be no information about 14-16-year-old Ukrainians in the register of voters, since citizens of Ukraine can vote only from the age of 18.
“This position of the DMSE contradicts not only the current legislation of Ukraine, but also international law regulating the regime of military occupation,” Yury Grishin said.
Analysis of the Ukrainian legislation shows that the migration service bodies have the opportunity to register the place of residence of citizens from the occupied territories, but refuse to do so.
For example, when registering a passport of a citizen of Ukraine the territorial bodies of the migration service of Ukraine in such situations can carry out simultaneous registration of a residence of the presence of an appropriate application and on the basis of data on the registration of parents that are contained in the passport and coincide with the information stated in the certificates issued by the occupation authorities of Crimea. With such registration of a place of residence, authorities can take into account already established practice in Ukraine of establishing the fact of birth or death in temporarily occupied territory by courts.
Crimean human rights group sued the State Migration Service of Ukraine in the interests of Crimean residents, who receive a passport of a citizen of Ukraine for the first time, but their passport details do not include the place of registration of permanent residence.
The District Administrative Court of Kiev opened proceedings on the case of the Crimean Human Rights Group to the State Migration Service of Ukraine on recognizing as illegal the actions of not filing passport data of Ukrainian citizens who receive a passport for the first time information about the place of registration of permanent residence in the temporarily occupied territory.
