Forced migrants must have opportunity not only to vote in local elections but also have the right to be elected. Assistant UN Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told that in an interview with Novoye Vremya, - reportsUNIAN.
"If you want to hold elections - free and fair, you have to allow the freedom of expression and media, freedom of assembly and association that do not exist there now," - he said.
In addition, Simonovic stressed the need to provide opportunities to displaced persons and refugees not only to get on the electoral roll and get the right to vote but also the right to be elected. Therefore, according to the Assistant UN Secretary General, preparations should start now.
As previously reported, on June 3rd Simonovic said at the briefing in Kiev,during the presentation of the 14th report of the UN monitoring mission on the human rights situation in Ukraine that there were hundreds of cases of torture both on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and territories controlled by the Ukrainian government. According to him, we are talking about cases on the territory controlled by armed militants, but also certain incidents took place on the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.