Judge representing Ukraine at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Hanna Yudkivska has gone on a maternity leave until the end of 2012, the Kommersant-Ukraine newspaper reported on Tuesday referring to an informed source in Strasbourg.
The article reads that the Ukrainian judge will return to work only
next year. In addition, Christmas holidays will start in France on
Dec. 22 and the ECHR will not hold hearings during the week before
this date due to vacations of other judges.
A source in the apparatus of Ukraine’s government commissioner for
the ECHR Nazar Kulchytsky also said that the European court has warned
the Ukrainian authorities about this and specified the reason for the
absence of the judge.
“We received an official letter from Strasbourg reading that Judge Yudkivska is on a maternity leave,” the source said.
It is mentioned in the article that the French government gives women
only 16 weeks of child care leave with retention of position.
Meanwhile, lawyer Valentyna Telychenko, who represents interests of
former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko at the ECHR and
cooperated with the defense team of former Ukrainian Premier Yulia
Tymoshenko when it filed its first lawsuit to the court [on illegal
arrest and maltreatment in prison], was alarmed by the reports about the
changes in the ECHR.
“No decision can be approved without a national judge. That’s why the
ECHR may announce its rulings on the Lutsenko and Tymoshenko cases only
next year,” Telychenko said.
Earlier, representatives of the Batkivschyna Party said that they
expected to receive the court’s ruling on the Tymoshenko case before the
parliamentary elections.
“We hope that the ECHR will announce its verdict soon… I really hope
that this will take place in the near month,” Deputy Chairman of the
Batkivschyna Party Oleksandr Turchynov said on October 7.
“We are expecting to receive a verdict in the next few weeks,”
Tymoshenko’s adviser on foreign policy issues, Hryhoriy Nemyria, said in
late September.
