Implementation of political block of the Minsk agreements should be preceded by humanitarian one — Iryna Gerashchenko

"Together with our Western partners, we stand in the position of fulfilling the Minsk agreements, as the peaceful plan that can bring the long-awaited end of the conflict in Donbass. But it is obvious that for Ukraine security and humanitarian dimension are two key blocks of the Minsk agreements. Without the solution of the humanitarian bloc, we can not go on to the political one", Iryna Gerashchenko, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, stated at the 10th Kyiv Security Forum, organized by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Foundation Open Ukraine. 

Iryna Gerashchenko clarified that it is not just about releasing the hostages: "This is the admission of humanitarian missions to the occupied territory as well as this is a matter of searching for missing persons and the involvement of the Red Cross in such search and examination of the dead".

"There is no explanation why the EU and the democratic world, in fact, pay so less attention to such key issues for themselves as a violation of human rights in the occupied territories. Today we are talking about destruction and pressure there, if we are talking about the Crimea, on the Crimean Tatars, the Crimean Tatar, and Ukrainian media", she explained. In turn, children are involved in the conflict in the Donbas, including sexual crimes.

"We are talking about the complete non-admission of any official international monitoring mission during the years of occupation, neither the mission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, nor the mission of the United Nations Commission on Prevention of Torture, or the mission of the Council of Europe. None of them was allowed to monitor the situation with human rights there", Iryna Gerashchenko stressed. 

She greatly emphasized that these issues should not remain on the secondary plane of high-level meetings agenda. "They need to be given priority. Because the implementation of the humanitarian block will create the basis for the political one which our Western partners so clearly insist on", concludedPresident's Envoy for Peaceful Settlement of the Situation in Donbas.