“Paper terrorists” or living people: how citizens’ requests to protect their rights overload officials

In a modern democratic society, the legal right of citizens to address authorities and request information is one of the cornerstones of justice and transparency. This right allows people to assert their rights, monitor the actions of government agencies, hold them accountable, and prevent abuse of power. However, recently voices have been heard in Ukraine condemning the activism of citizens and trying to present their legal actions as a threat to the effective work of civil servants and “paper terrorism”.

The reaction of the Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights to citizens’ appeals

Recently, the Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, announced the emergence of the problem of citizens’ abuse of the right to information and appeals. According to the Ombudsman, the so-called “paper terrorism” occurs when citizens deliberately start sending a large number of complaints or requests to state bodies and thus cause their overload.

Thus, according to the survey of state bodies and local self-government bodies conducted by the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada, it was established that from 2023 there was a trend towards a significant increase in the number of cases of abuse of information rights. Such a situation endangers the realization of the rights of other citizens, and also creates an excessive burden on the relevant state bodies. And such abuses cost the budget not cheaply, but 46 million hryvnias.

Thus, the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada conducted a survey of state bodies and local self-government bodies regarding the abuse of the right to information and appeals, based on the results of which an analytical report was made.

“Firstly, since the end of 2023, the number of cases of abuse of information rights by groups of persons is characteristic. This has signs of concerted actions using a similar methodology. That in the conditions of martial law may pose a threat to the proper functioning of the relevant state bodies, as well as the exercise of rights by other citizens.

Secondly, the abuse of the right and information and appeal causes a burden on the budget and requires the involvement of civil servants in useless work. — noted ombudsman.

The main human rights defender of the state stated that, on average, an employee of state authorities spends 10 hours processing one request, local self-government bodies – 4.8 hours. At the same time, the total cost of processing requests with signs of this abuse is estimated to be more than 12 million hryvnias.

In addition, he noted that, on average, an employee of state authorities spends 9 hours processing one application, an employee of the local government – 5.5 hours, and the total cost of processing one request and application by state authorities is more than 46 million hryvnias.

“Undoubtedly, the so-called “paper terrorism” requires a response: both in view of the illegal activity of the requesters, and in view of the burden on state bodies.” – summed up the Ombudsman.

State officials believe that the reasons for the abuse of citizens’ requests for access to public information are, as a rule, the illegal motives of the requesters, the lack of legal responsibility for such actions, and the imperfection and irrelevance of legislation.

The most common types of abuse by officials, as a rule, include:

• sending a large number of appeals and requests of the same content in a short period of time both from one person and from different persons;
• appeals of the same type sent for consideration to different bodies;
• submission of appeals with a request to send them to another addressee;
• regular abuse of the right to oral appeal;
• use of obscene language in the address;
• abuse of the right to consider the appeal directly by the head of the authority.

How to respond to the ombudsman’s statement

This position of the Commissioner for Human Rights is surprising, to say the least. After all, his duties include monitoring the observance of constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen. And here he takes it himself and declares, they say, complain less, otherwise our civil servants are overloaded. And aren’t the civil servants themselves the cause of the appearance of such complaints and their prolongation?

Every day, the Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights receives a variety of complaints related to rights violations:

• violation of the right to access information;
• violation of rights in the field of social security;
• violation of the rights of prisoners and detainees;
• violation of labor rights;
• violation of rights to health care;
• violation of housing rights;
• violation of the rights of children and youth;
• violation of rights to protection against discrimination.

Problems related to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation played not the least role in the increase of such complaints.  But we should not forget about internal factors, which are the constant cause of such a situation. This is bureaucratic red tape, and the careless attitude of most officials to their direct duties, the lack of effective control by the state, regarding the activities of officials on the ground.

For the sake of justice, it should be noted that there is indeed a category of citizens who do not apply to the substance or address, distracting officials from more important matters. In addition, Lubenets’ statement was caused by various factors, including:

• limited number of employees of state authorities;
• limitation of financial resources;
• excessive number of complaints;
• complex or ambiguous complaints;
• bureaucratic red tape;
• non-compliance of complaints with established criteria.

However, instead of solving these problems, the Ombudsman suggests that citizens stop complaining and thus takes away from people the most important thing – their right to protect their interests. The question arises as to whose interests the Human Rights Commissioner protects in this case: citizens who need protection, or officials who do not want to perform their direct duties?

According to the norms of national legislation, every citizen has the right to protect his rights and freedoms from illegal encroachments and violations in any way that does not contradict the law. The Constitution and legislation of Ukraine provide for the formation of a system of state bodies, the purpose of which is to assist citizens in realizing and protecting their rights.

Why do people turn to government agencies?

Despite numerous reforms, the course of which is aimed at integration into the EU, there are still many problems in the country that are kept silent or remain unaddressed for many years. Every day, citizens face manifestations of arbitrariness, unfair treatment by officials, fall into corruption schemes. Instead of receiving proper protection of rights and freedoms, Ukrainians often become victims of a system that has been in place for years, where rights are not protected, but bought.

In conditions of economic instability, changes occur in various industries, which leads to mass layoffs, and the entrepreneurs themselves try to avoid compensation payments.  At the same time, those who managed to keep their jobs suffer from excessive workload and meager wages, incompatible with the living wage. And how many cases of injuries at work, which often end in death due to employers’ neglect of minimum safety standards.

Higher education remains inaccessible to the majority of citizens from socially vulnerable categories of the population. As a result, not all citizens of our country currently have the opportunity to fully realize their constitutional right to education. Thus, according to Art. 53 of the Constitution of Ukraine, citizens have the right to get higher education free of charge in state and communal educational institutions on a constitutional basis. But in practice, the opportunity to obtain such an education for a specific citizen is complicated by many factors. Firstly, due to the presence of corruption during admission to higher educational institutions, and secondly, and perhaps most importantly, due to material insecurity. After all, the extremely low level of wages is simply incompatible with the exorbitant amounts of tuition fees in institutions of higher education. And this situation has been going on for years without any changes or intervention from the state.

Trips to medical institutions often turn into “charity events”, when they are asked to donate money for repairs and the purchase of medical equipment.

Bureaucratic red tape stands in the way of timely material and technical provision of servicemen. And this is a matter of life and death at the front! And after completing their service, military veterans enter the world of endless paperwork, where they have to prove their disability and confirm it annually. Obtaining veteran status and applying for benefits is a process that can take years.

And people with disabilities, in general, live in a world of permanent barriers. The imperfection of the urban infrastructure constantly challenges them. And the lack of vocational rehabilitation programs makes it impossible to employ people with disabilities.

Ukrainians with the status of IDPs have to put their lives in danger to collect a lot of evidence that their houses were really destroyed as a result of hostilities. When the first obstacle is overcome, tours of all institutions and waiting in long lines begin. In the end, people are told that the specialist who is supposed to deal with the compensation procedure is on vacation, and they should come in the fall.

One of the vivid examples of legal nihilism was the amendments introduced by the parliament back in 2016 to the fourth part of Article 63 of the Law of Ukraine “On pension provision of persons discharged from military service and certain other persons” dated April 9, 1992 No. 2262-XII, as amended from for the purpose of implementation by the Government of the so-called “manual regulation” of the recalculation of military pensioners’ pensions. But the negative consequences of such actions still reverberate. The mentioned decision of the parliament, as well as the by-laws adopted by the Government in accordance with the mentioned Law, so far have a negative impact on the proper well-being of military pensioners, who are forced to seek the right to recalculate their pensions by themselves, turning to the courts.  At the same time, courts have a tendency to make different decisions on the same cases, which do not always benefit citizens. Cases of corruption in such circumstances are not rare. And for some reason, state bodies remain blind to such situations.

Under the pressure of all these unsolved problems, people seek the truth and turn for help to state bodies, which are called to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens. But it is easier for the state to categorize all the defenseless as “paper terrorists” and put their cases in a long drawer. Because, you see, they overload officials who are already unwilling to work at the proper level.

The state should pay attention to the efficiency of the performance of duties by all state bodies. Citizens cannot be left alone with problems that arise not because of themselves, but, obviously, because of the imperfection of the systems of certain state structures. Effective policies and laws that protect the rights of citizens, rather than turning against them, contribute to the strengthening of a democratic and civilized society. It is important that the mechanisms of control and monitoring of the observance of rights work properly, and that citizens have the opportunity to defend their rights and count on a fair decision. Only through constant dialogue between the state and society can a fair existence for all be achieved. Between the state and the people, high barriers should not be erected, but, on the contrary, strong bridges should be built.

Many appeals from Ukrainians to the ombudsman himself. In wartime, society is mainly interested in Ukrainian prisoners and the crimes of the Russians. But the most complaints are always written due to the violation of social and economic rights, that is, about problems with payments, social assistance, etc.

When the Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, recently declared about “paper terrorism”, it is worth thinking: are mass appeals by citizens really a problem, or is it a sign that the public is starting to more actively protect their rights, which are constantly being violated? After all, citizens, not officials, are the basis of the state, and their requests are not a burden, but an opportunity to identify and correct deficiencies in the work of state bodies. Instead of calling people’s activity “terrorism”, it should be considered as evidence of the presence of many unresolved problems in the state, a growing consciousness and a desire to make the country better.

Every request, every complaint is the voice of a person who disagrees with injustice. And in a democratic society, this voice should be heard. Refusal to do so is a step back, towards the closedness and permissiveness of the authorities. Therefore, when citizens send statements, complaints and requests, demanding answers and their solutions, this is not sabotage, but a real democratic struggle for transparency and justice.