Ukrainian Villagers Learn Land Rights through Public Education Program
While the USAID-supported Land Titling Initiative Project (ULTI) is about giving villagers title to land, the process is not simply about doing a quick bureaucratic shuffle and filling out a certificate. Public education and outreach are just as important to ensure that people know their options and their rights. TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet – all the media outlets available today are used to provide villagers and officials with legal knowledge, draw attention to problematic land relations issues and promote their resolution, encourage citizens to actively protect their rights, and provide for civil society development in Ukraine.
“ULTI’s Agronovyny program is on the air. Greetings, my name is Olena Kochubynska!” Millions of villagers all over Ukraine have heard these words for several years, spoken each day at 5:45 and 21:00.
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Olena Kochubynska (right) prepares to go on air
Photo Credit: Serhiy Suchenko |
“They recognize me by my voice”, explains Mrs. Kochubynska, the project’s public education and outreach manager. “Today it is difficult to remember situation when I started to work. We had to do everything from scratch: at that time not only villagers, but most officials had a vague understanding of Ukrainian land reform mechanisms and the obstacles they would have to deal with. People were not ready for it; they did not know the laws and often gave their own interpretations.”
Aside from Agronovyny, which has become the calling card for ULTI’s public education campaign, the weekly TV program Silskiy Chas, which airs every Sunday on the First National Channel, has been another reliable partner for some time now. UT-1 program staff and ULTI public education specialists prepare programs on current activities and present typical problems connected with the establishment of new land relations. Silskiy Chas has now launched a new 45-minute educational program, which airs on every last Sunday of the month. This program, in cooperation with oblast state administration officials, aims to expose and solve the most typical land disputes that have arisen in this or that oblast. Top oblast and local officials, farmers, villagers, lawyers and independent experts take part in the program, and provide professional analysis and advice.
ULTI’s printed materials also have become quite popular. The project’s publication, Land Privatization: Law, Practice, Problems, has found its way to the Cabinet of Ministers, the President’s Secretariat and the Verkhovna Rada. Every Ukrainian village receives at least 20 copies of ULTI’s other publication, Land Issues: Legal Advice to the Villager, which is dedicated to land relations.
USAID’s land titling program has also moved onto the information superhighway. ULTI’s official website has proved to be an invaluable source of information for Internet users, especially lawyers, government officials at different levels, the press, and not least of all, the farmers.
Through its public education and out-reach efforts, ULTI has established an effective nationwide network for rural legal education. The results can be illustrated via a true incident, in which a farmer visited ULTI’s main office in Kyiv to obtain some help. In general, the office in Kyiv does not provide direct advice – this duty is reserved to the ULTI Legal Aid Centers, located in all oblast capitals. However, it turned out that the visitor was not actually looking for legal counseling for he knew the situation well and even cited the respective legislation. He simply needed help in filling out some documents. When asked where he had developed such knowledge of the law, he answered: “I listen to Agronovyny every day.”
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