Most citizen protest actions in Ukraine concerned social-economic problems

Experts say most protest actions (56 per cent) that took place in Ukraine from October 2009 till December 2010 concerned social-economic problems

Most protest actions (56 per cent) that took place in Ukraine from October 2009 till December 2010 concerned social-economic problems, experts of the Center for Society Research say. The Project was supported by the Civil Society Impact Enhancement Program of the International Renaissance Foundation.

According to experts, the following circumstances and situations most often led to protests: delays in payment of salaries and violations of employees’ rights; cases of infill construction; violations of the right to housing (first of all, eviction from dormitories); problems of ecology, housing and community amenities and public transportation.

3,600 protest actions were registered in total for the indicated period in Ukraine, that is, on the average eight ones were registered every day. At the same time only 26 per cent of the protests took place with participation of political parties and the latter participated only in 10 per cent of the social-economic protests.

During the period from the last presidential elections in Ukraine till September 2010 frequency of repressive actions increased almost by one and a half times (from 10.8 repressions per 100 protest actions before the elections to 15.2 after the elections). During the last three months of 2010 frequency of repressions increased even more – to 16.6:100. One started to apply preventive repressions more often and those are such: court ban to conduct actions; prevention of conducting; intimidation of protesters or their carriers.

The complete text of the research (in Ukrainian) can be found here.

Contact information: Center for Society Research, Inna Sovsun, 067 502 57 27

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The goal of the Civil Society Impact Enhancement Program is to promote development of a system to protect the rights of public and municipal service consumers and to support NGO policy capacity building.

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