Thoughts about approaches to reforming the law of Ukraine in the area of freedom of worship and the activity of religious organizations
18.12.2007, [11:27] // Analysis & comments //
Maksim VASIN, expert on legal matters at the Institute of Religious Freedom, Master of Law
During the 16 years of work creating norms, the legislation in the area of freedom of worship and the activity of religious organizations in independent Ukraine has long since overstepped the limits of the fundamental law “On freedom of worship and religious organizations,” which was passed in April 1991 and selectively edited in 2003 for the last time. However, during that time, a countless number of special normative acts have been passed which are aimed at regulating specific areas of social life and, at the same time, regulate certain interrelations directly connected with the exercise of the right to freedom of worship and religious expression.
Apparently, this article will not be sufficient to list and, especially, analyze all norms connected in one way or another with freedom of worship and the activity of religious organizations. However, in this work we will try to concentrate on the most urgent questions, namely, legislative initiatives which are long awaited in the religious environment and possibilities for their implementation.
The question of approval of the new wording of the law of Ukraine “On freedom of worship and religious organizations” has recently been raised very often both in expert and scholarly circles and in the drafts of legislative works [1] and even in the text of the agreement about a possible democratic coalition in the Parliament of Ukraine of the Sixth Convocation [2]. Of course, the current law is rather obsolete now and is not in line with many realities of today’s life, and can and should be further improved despite its democratic character.
It should be noted that as they speak in the offices of the authorities and the headquarters of parties about the necessity to adopt a new wording, they often do not bother too much to think about the question of the essence of future changes in this area and an analysis of achievements and, possibly, losses caused by the current law. Regardless, one can surely say that one can observe a growth of the religious network (as of 01.01.1997: 18479 religious communities, as of 01.01.2007: 31749 religious communities) [3] and development of the network of religious educational institutions, which indicates that the legislative conditions have been created for the exercise of the right of freedom of worship by the citizens and meeting the religious needs of the population. And this is not the only merit of the current wording, for, however paradoxical it may seem, the lack of the legislative regulation of certain kinds of religious activities served as a stimulus to introduce certain legal customs in interdenominational and church-state- relations, such as setting up independent consulting and advisory interdenominational councils at the national and regional levels.
On the other hand, the law requires substantial and complex amendments, the goal and content of which should not reduce the existing level of religious freedom in Ukraine but improve or introduce certain legal mechanisms for the exercise of the right of freedom of worship and religious expression and ensure necessary conditions for the uninterrupted activity of religious organizations. Such problems include the issue of restitution of former church property (which is more expediently settled by a separate special law) and the question of the elimination of the procedure of “double registration” of religious organizations, exclusion of provisions on alternating use of religious buildings by representatives of different denominations, bringing the existing norms of the procedure of holding divine services and peaceful gatherings of believing citizens in line with the provisions of the Ukrainian Constitution, ensuring labor and pension rights of workers of religious organizations, equalization of rights of students of religious educational institutions with those of students of state educational institutions, ensuring the rights of foreigners at the moment of establishment of religious organizations and during their religious activity in Ukraine, monitoring and responsibility of individual persons and religious organizations for abuse of the granted rights and trust of the believers, and so on.
In view of the great number of problems to be solved, many people get the impression that they all can be solved by a new wording of the law on freedom of worship and religious organizations. However such an approach has at least three aspects, which can complicate or disable its realization. First, experience shows that a religious community is, virtually, a rather conservative community, where believers and ministers are used to certain rules of behavior and interrelations with the authorities and, therefore, an attempt to radically reform the current law may lead to resistance from ordinary believers, the people for whom the law is passed. One can mention as an example the process of introducing identification numbers for tax payers, when, despite the fact that church hierarchs were not against the introduction of the numbers, many Orthodox believers and representatives of other churches interpreted it as an apocalyptical event and strongly protested it. The Parliament of Ukraine even held a special hearing in that regard in June 2005 [4].
Second, in the existing social-political conditions in Ukraine, even the best new wording of the mentioned law is exposed to the danger of revision and total correction if it gets to the session hall of Parliament. Mass media publications repeatedly described incidents when the deputies became polarized and opposed each other defending their strictly denominational positions in the process of consideration by Parliament of questions regarding religion. In a similar way, the new wording of the law, developed in 2006 by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine with the participation of representatives of religious associations, public experts and scholars, got rid of substantial innovations, which were fundamental both for the developers and the Ukrainian churches, already at the stage of clearing them with respective ministries and departments. In view of that and in order to prevent further adjustments of the bill of good content according to the political likings of deputies and respective officials, on 24 November 2006, the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations published its address to the leadership of the state, which noted that “in order to reach a consensus, we consider it expedient to continue the consultations on finishing the concept of state-denominational relations and the new wording of the law of Ukraine ‘On freedom of worship and religious organizations.’”[5]
And, third, it would be somewhat erroneous to think that even complex changes to the law on freedom of worship and religious organizations can be a panacea for all problems of religious life. For in view of the above-mentioned diversity of legislative acts in the area of freedom of worship and the activity of religious organizations, there will still exist a need to make amendments to some special laws and normative acts. For instance, the question of the renewal of the right to permanent use of land cannot be settled without making respective changes to the land code of Ukraine. The question of canceling the procedure of “double registration” will require amending the law “On the state registration of legal persons and physical persons, entrepreneurs,” and the problem of prohibiting privatization of former church property can be solved by way of amending a number of laws or through adoption of a separate law. And the list can be continued.
To sum up, one can conclude that, in the present conditions, greater attention should be paid precisely to the possibility of reforming Ukrainian legislation in the area of freedom of worship and the activity of religious organizations precisely through the mechanism of making separate amendments to special legislative acts without changing the basic law on freedom of worship and religious organizations. In conditions in which the legislative branch of power lacks understanding of the need for religious freedom and lacks experts in these matters, one cannot risk the achievements of many years of the young Ukrainian democracy in the area of ensuring the right to freedom of worship and religious expression. Therefore, prior to submitting a new wording of the law on freedom of worship and religious organizations to consideration of the members of Parliament, it is advisable to check if they are interested and capable of improving the conditions of the socially-useful activity of religious organizations through voting for individual amendments to other laws. This approach will allow movement little by little toward reformation of the Ukrainian law in this socially sensitive area.
The article is based on a report prepared for the scholarly-practical conference “Religion and the Church in modern Ukraine: Condition, problems, prospects,” organized by the State Committee on Matters of Nationalities and Religions on 21 September 2007
RISU’s Ukrainian-language site posted the text on 29 November 2007.
References to sources:
1 Web-site of the Parliament of Ukraine // http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/laws/main.cgi?nreg=397-16
2 Agreement of the establishment of the Coalition of Democratic Forces in the Parliament of Ukraine of the Sixth Convocation. – Page 18 // http://www.pravda.com.ua/_site/html/download/ugoda.doc
3 Report of the State Committee on Matters of Religions “On the network of churches and religious organizations” as of 01.01.1997. Report of the State Department on Matters of Religions “On the network of churches and religious organizations” as of 01.01.2007. (Chapter “Statistics of religions in Ukraine” at RISU portal)
4 Parliamentary hearing on the subject “Freedom of worship and identification of the person.” // http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/laws/main.cgi?nreg=2485-15 http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/laws/main.cgi?nreg=2965-15
5 Commersant-Ukraine ¹ 213 of 27.11.2006 // http://www.kommersant.ua/doc.html?DocID=725154&IssueId=35783; вÑÓ // http://www.risu.org.ua/ukr/news/article;13001/
