On the last day of the Publishers Forum, Roman Romanov, Director of the Human Rights and Justice Program, participated in the discussion “How to include books on human rights into the socio-cultural discourse of the country?” The discussion was organized by the Human Rights Expert Center.
Roman Romanov shared his observations: the way how the legal literature is presented at the Publishers Forum reflects very well the perception of the role of law in the Ukrainian society: as something that is written in a language not to be understood by ordinary people and to be used only by professionals. This points out to a deep socio-cultural problem that exists in our country: law is not perceived as something practical, whereas the legal procedures are not intended to be used by ordinary citizens.
At present, professional lawyers act as intermediaries between the law and citizens. In fact, they translate the legal needs of ordinary people into complex legal language. For the modern world, which revolves around the speed of decision making, it is a too slow process. Penetration of law into society in such a way is unacceptable. At the same time, the adult learning in the Western world is developing precisely in the direction of the legal education through available teaching methods.
Roman Romanov also stressed a lack of quality translation of legal literature into Ukrainian on the Ukrainian book market.
Other panelists discussed the ways to motivate publishers to issue books on human rights, targeting a wide circle of readers, while giving incentive to readers themselves to become familiar with legal literature.
