On 10 September 2024, the second edition of the World Bank's Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and
Gender Minorities report was launched.
The new edition of the World Bank's EQOSOGI report documents the current state of laws, regulations,
and policies across 64 different countries in six important areas of their life: education, employment,
access to public services and social protection, civil and political inclusion, protection from hate crimes,
and from being criminalized.
Our colleagues Iryna Boyko, Olha Podilchak and Olena Shostko have contributed (pro bono) to this research.
The report is available here.
“Organized Crime as Institutional Cluster”
On July 10, 2024, the Ukrainian Center of Legal Studies held a webinar presentation on the monograph of
the Center's expert Tetiana Melnychuk entitled “Organized Crime as Institutional Cluster”, which was
published in 2023 by Springer.
At the beginning, Dr. Melnychuk briefly described the background of the study, as well as the methods used
in the research process. In particular, the study used a combination of the classical methodology of
quantitative and qualitative criminological research with extrapolation of cluster analysis/modeling tools,
which has been successfully tested in social and economic sciences as a kind of method of organizing
spatially localized systems.
From the point of view of the cluster approach, a criminal act is not an isolated act, but a link in the chain
of a certain system of actions and the result of collective efforts of interconnected actors. In order
to understand the phenomenology of organized crime, it is important to analyze the internal dynamic structure
of criminal communities. It is even more important to understand how they are embedded in other social systems,
as they do not operate in isolation from social processes.
The speaker focused on the institutional nature of organized crime, drew attention to the key markers of a criminal
cluster and its structure.
It was emphasized that, in a structural sense, an organized crime cluster is analyzed in terms of actors directly
involved in criminal and crime-serving activities and their joint interaction (the so-called “internal” links),
as well as actors that do not actually belong to the cluster permanently or temporarily, but with whom the cluster
interacts through the use of common infrastructure, including legal infrastructure or resources, the distribution
of criminal budgets and investment in the black market, or the injection of already laundered funds into the formal
economy (so-called “external” links). Depending on the type of criminal activity, cluster members and interaction
agents act as consumers (clients), suppliers, controllers or intermediaries.
Trends in modern organized crime in Ukraine and the impact of the war on its development were also discussed.
The scholars present at the webinar lively discussed what they had heard. The questions posed to the author
concerned fraudulent schemes of so-called call centers, localization of modern organized crime in Ukraine,
the benefits of preventing organized crime and its consideration as a cluster. An important question was how
interested law enforcement officials are in applying scientific research in their work. As for the latter,
unfortunately, as the speaker noted, there is a problem of lack of interest of law enforcement officers
in this kind of research.
We are planning to continue such meetings: webinars on current legal topics. Follow the announcements on our Facebook page.
You can watch the presentation here.
We are grateful to the Ukrainian Fulbright Circle for the financial support of Olena Shostko's project.
Tetiana Melnychuk's research was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
You can buy the book from the publisher here.
On September 28-29, 2022, the seminar for deputy ministers and state secretaries on the topic: "The Law
"On Administrative Procedure": individual amendments and implementation measures" took place.
It was organized by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and the Reforms Delivery Office of the Cabinet
of Ministers of Ukraine with the assistance of the European Union within the framework of the project
"Support to Comprehensive Reform of Public Administration in Ukraine" (EU4PAR).
Irina Boyko, Member of the Board of the Center for Ukrainian Legal Studies, took part in the event as a speaker.
The President of the Republic of Latvia Egils Levits addressed the participants of the seminar.
He was one of the developers of the administrative and procedural legislation of Latvia, and therefore
he had the opportunity to professionally evaluate Ukrainian law. In his opinion, the Law of Ukraine
"On Administrative Procedure" fully meets European standards in the field of public administration.
President Egils Levits emphasized that the "On Administrative Procedure" is key in establishing the rule
of law in the state, and the Constitution works thanks to the mechanisms laid down in this law.
The discussion that took place between the participants of the seminar became the basis for the formation
of a statesman's position regarding the need for normative and organizational implementation of
the provisions of the Law "On Administrative Procedure".
Olena Shostko, the Head of the board of the "Ukrainian Center of Legal Studies", took part in the 22nd annual conference of the European Society of Criminology (21 - 24 September, 2022), where she gave the presentation "Mass Atrocities during Russian Aggression against Ukraine in 2022: Scale and Peculiarities".
Olena Shostko spoke on the panel called "Conflict, Atrocity Crime and Post-Conflict Justice in Ukraine" together with colleagues from Germany, Great Britain, Croatia, and the Netherlands.
After two previous online conferences, the XXII conference was held in the Spanish city of Malaga. The Conference attracted more than 1,400 participants.
Plenary and section meetings were held at the University of Malaga - one of the largest public universities in Spain with over 36,000 students in the bachelor, master's and doctorate program.
Participation in the conference became possible due to the Small Grants Program of the "The Ukrainian Fulbright Circle" as well as fellowship of the European Society of Criminology.
Click here to view the presentation.
On February 21, 2022, Olena Shostko took part, as a lecturer, in the training of the judges of the High Anti-corruption Court, which was conducted by the National School of Judges of Ukraine in cooperation with the Anti-Corruption Initiative of the European Union in Ukraine.
Olena Shostko presented for discussion lectures on Ukraine's international obligations
in the field of anti-corruption, the legal framework and practical problems
of whistleblower protection, best practices and international standards
on asset recovery and certain issues of civil confiscation.
Read more about the training
here.
