Denial of access complaints to the Commissioner from Bukovyna spikes in 2024

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The Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights received 148 appeals from Chernivtsi oblast regarding violations of the right to access public information from January 1 to December 31, 2024. Only 37 such complaints were received in 2023, said Iryna Isopenko, the Commissioner's representative in Chernivtsi oblast, in response to a query by Alyona Chorna of the Institute of Mass Information.

The Commissioner has received as many as 12 complaints from Chernivtsi oblast since the start of 2025. The data was obtained using the electronic document management system Megapolis.DocNet.

The response to Alyona Chorna's query does not indicate whom the most of 2024 complaints were about. It cites Paragraph 1, Part 1, Article 22 of the Law “On Access to Public Information” to note that “the requested information was not created or recorded.”

In 2024, however, the Commissioner did provide a list of specific violations in response to a similar query from an IMI representative. Namely, protocols were drawn up against an official of the municipal non-profit Chernivtsi Oblast Narcological Dispensary under Part 2 of Article 2123 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. The case will be tried by the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Chernivtsi.

A Nepolokivtsi Town Council (Chernivtsi district) lawyer was prosecuted under a similar article.