Dr. Vera Mishenko and Dr. Natalia Javoronkova
Women's Legal Company ECO-JURIS
117311 Moscow, ul.Krupskoy, 4-3-93
RUSSIA
TEL: (095) 930-11-71
Translated by Barbara Welling Hall
Women are the majority of legal practitioners in Russia -- judges, attorneys, prosecutors, and officials in state departments and ministries, including the Russian Ministry of Ecology. Their activity is directly connected with the protection of nature and the rational use of natural resources.
Legal enforcement of environmental rights and interests remains rather weak in Russia for several reasons:
(1) Existing environmental legislation, in particular, the Russian Law on Nature Protection, contains only general provisions regarding citizens' environmental rights. There are many gaps in this law, articles are badly worded, and this legislation is not well-coordinated with other legislation. The absence of correlation with procedural norms paralyzes its enforcement.
(2) As legal practitioners, women (judges, attorneys, jurisconsults, etc.) have no available objective information (e.g. economic or medical) about the state of the environment. There is no effective legal mechanism to compell reluctant officials to provide withheld information.
(3) Women lawyers (like the general population) lack adequate environmental education.
(4) The activity of women lawyers in defending citizens' environmental rights is uncoordinated. Joint efforts in reviewing experience, sharing information and skills, and working out general strategies are all sorely needed.
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