Over the four years the Ministry of Justice has created a full-fledged system of free legal aid, which ensures the protection of the rights of all population groups without exception, claimed Minister of Justice of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko while delivering his speech at the Annual Conference of the International Bar Association in Sydney.

«Access to justice is an integral part of a sustainable and comprehensive development of the state. The key objective for the Ministry of Justice is to protect human rights by ensuring equal access to justice», Pavlo Petrenko emphasized.

According to the Minister, 550 legal aid centers are functioning within the system, more than 2000 lawyers and 3000 legal counsels are involved in the provision of free legal aid. The centers were attended by more than 700 thousand persons, of which almost 100 thousand have received services of a lawyer, others - consultations and clarifications. The system enables all citizens to protect their interests.

«Every citizen without exception, can apply to any center or legal aid office in order to get an advice. The system also provides lawyers to citizens who are belonging to socially vulnerable populations. These are tens of thousands of people who previously could not achieve justice, because they did not have money for a private lawyer», the Minister stressed.

The next step was the launch of all-Ukrainian educational project "I Have a Right!" this year.

In this regard, Pavlo Petrenko stressed that the quality of life of people depends directly on how citizens are aware of the protection of their rights

«The country has finally begun to fulfill one of the most essential function - to inform citizens about rights and provide effective tools of their protection. The first results we have today are real cases of combating the illegal seizures of land or harvest with the help of the work of anti-raiding staffs throughout Ukraine, including in the field of legal education regarding the protection of the rights of farmers», underlined the Minister of Justice.