Over 60 Odesa Landowners Join Free Seminars on Land Law and

More than 60 small landowners and farmers from Kotovskyi and Tatarbunarskyi districts of Odesa Oblast took part in free seminars on land law and legal empowerment of landowners. The effect of such events was maximized: the villagers received up-to-date legal information, and experts received a certain cross-section of local land issues.

The training seminar "Land rights, human rights protection and education. Opportunities and Prospects" was based on issues reflecting the current state of land ownership in Ukraine: problematic aspects of land legislation and its actual application, land ownership (acquisition, disposal, alienation), agricultural land lease (conclusion, amendment, termination of contracts, rent). In addition to legal information on how to exercise their rights, the villagers received advice on how to protect them from the trainer, an expert from the Kherson regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, Oleksandr Moshniagul, and this was what aroused the greatest interest.

The first event took place on January 29 in Kotovsk, and was attended by 43 people - 15 village heads and secretaries of village councils of Kotovsk district, 14 heads of farms and agricultural enterprises, representatives of the district state administration, justice authorities and local journalists (including the KET TV channel). An active discussion arose regarding lease relations (primarily the procedure and amount of rent payment), title documents for land plots and their state registration, and obtaining a cadastral number. Thanks to the presence at the seminar of the head of the registration service of the Kotovsk Interdistrict Department of Justice, many procedural issues regarding state registration of real rights to real estate, including land plots, were clarified.

The next day, on January 30, a similar seminar was held in the city of Tatarbunary, Odesa region. Despite the slightly different composition of the participants (21 people, most of them small landowners of small rural communities in the Tatarbunary district), the villagers' questions remained similar: formation of land plots and registration of rights to them, land lease. An important problem was raised by residents of Vyshneve village in Tatarbunary district: more than 20 people in the village have state land titles, but they do not actually have the land itself - it has not been allocated in kind, and local authorities refuse to solve this problem. In addition to these issues, the discussion also touched on the possibilities of agricultural cooperation and the problems in establishing and operating service cooperatives. The participants were unanimous in their assessments: if you have the will and faith in yourself, you can fight dishonest tenants, make the authorities work, and find funding. At the request of the participants, Ihor Brynosh, Head of the Legal Department of the Odesa Organization of the CVU, made a presentation on the USAID Agroinvest project and its capabilities (both for protecting the land rights of citizens and supporting agriculture in general), introduced the resources of the project website and successful practices of cooperation with the project.

The activity of the villagers, their participation in such events and their wishes, and lively discussions of many pressing issues confirmed the need to conduct such trainings in the future, on an ongoing basis, involving land law experts and practitioners.

The training seminars in Kotovsk and Tatarbunary were conducted jointly by the Odesa and Kherson organizations of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, with the assistance of the Kotovsk Interdistrict and Tatarbunary District Justice Departments and financial support from the USAID Agroinvest project.

Press service
Odesa regional organization
NGO "Committee of Voters of Ukraine"