As it's always not easy to right about oneself, I decided to use what others wrote about me - here is the article from the "Advocate" legal magazine which quite fully describes my career development.

However, there is an issue which I cannot avoid and have to address personally - it's a question why I have decided to participate in the competition for nomination of candidates to the European Court of Human Rights, given my young age and, consequently, presumable lack of experience in comparing to other participants. So, I would like to share with you my views in this respect.

There is a perception that a judge in an international court should be a specialist in the field of international law. Therefore, the majority of the Ukrainian candidates for this post were international lawyers, who had an academic degree. But the European Court of Human Rights substantially differs in this respect - its judgments cut deeply into the legal traditions of the Contracting States, and the judge - representative of the State - is expected to be able to explain how the internal legal system is functioning, accordingly he should perfectly know the domestic law, and especially the procedure.

One more essential “aspect” - we are talking about the court on HUMAN RIGHTS. Some years ago a famous law professor Costas Douzinas in his book "The End of Human Rights" expressed his concern that the human rights issues are dealt by "triumphalist column writers, bored diplomats and rich international lawyers ... whose experience of human rights violations is confined to being served a bad bottle of wine". To a certain extent this criticism makes sense. Diplomats and international lawyers often lack an intuitive sensation to problems of violation of fundamental rights due to absence of any experience of own facings of such violations, which could, ultimately, generate a feeling of "moral incompatibility with facts of disregard of human rights" 1 .

One can hardly gain an experience, necessary for a human rights defence, whilst sitting in a clean office and making researches on international law problems. Such an experience, a firm stance and strong motivation appear after months and years of OWN attempts to breach the blind wall of domestic justice, to save innocents and to help in any possible way to those in distress. Such an experience comes with everlasting wait of investigators and judges, communication with clients being monitored, studying the case file in dark courts' corridors without any facilities. It comes with quotidian listening to intimate stories of sufferers and with unfruitful efforts to break the vicious circle police-prosecutors-courts etc. In some states only defence attorneys can become judges, assuming that "to judge" means "to have a judgement", and a right to have a judgment is given to those who firstly learned how to defend and who had firsthand knowledge of what does it mean for an everyman to get under wheels of justice. To defend someone who, being persecuted, becomes absolutely helpless is very hard in Ukraine , much harder than to do that in international courts.

I was rousted out of bed in the nighttimes because yet another victim had been tortured in the police office, I was threatened by investigators who planted drugs on me and withdrew from the process; judges and prosecutors laughed in my face when I raised issues of tortures, equality of arms or other aspects of a fair trial; my petitions were torn in front of my very eyes.

Is this experience more important for the Court than an experience of scientific research? I don't think so - the Court equally needs both theorists and practicians (the prevailing opinion, repeatedly expressed by many researches, that the long-term constitutional impact of the Court's jurisprudence suggests the need for judges with constitutional law and human rights expertise of three categories: the academic, the judicial service and the practising or company lawyer). Nevertheless, I'll hazard a remark that an opt for one of these categories also depends on particularities of the country which the judge should represent. The majority of human rights violations in Ukraine derive not from the legislation's shortcomings (we quite quickly "dollied up" our legislation to the international standards), but from the well-established vicious law-enforcement practice. Indeed, the strategic role of the European Court of Human Rights is to help the state to cure its diseased legal system. And practicians - lawyers, judges, prosecutors (unlike the scientists) - know all the problematic issues of domestic law-enforcement traditions. Furthermore, up to the present time Ukraine was represented by Dr Volodymyr Butkevych - a really prominent international lawyer. Day by day he has been putting a quintessence of the Ukrainian legal philosophy into the Court's judgments. It is impossible to overestimate his contribution, as well as to imagine that another Ukrainian scientist who replaces him will be able to add to this contribution. I think that he should be replaced by a practician who will save the values of his approach and complement it with a practical vision of the problems occurred.

I've decided to participate in the competition having appraised my own capabilities in this perspective - I hope that my practical experience in Ukraine is enough not only to identify our legal system's shortcomings but also to propose the ways to rectify them. Why more experienced judges and defence lawyers did not have a possibility to be nominated? It so happened in our country that judges and lawyers, as distinct from international lawyers, do not pay enough attention to learning of foreign languages. I do have this advantage. Furthermore, I have got professional education in the field of human rights, and I know quite well the Court's case-law due to my two years' work in this institution (by the way, the Court is concerned that new judges who are supposed to come are not familiar enough with its jurisprudence which may lead to some inconsistency). A fortunate combination of these qualities, I suppose, set the commission's opinion in my favour.

One cannot be born a judge, and be taught to be a judge. In order to deserve this high position it is necessary to love people and to evaluate circumstances of each case through the perspective of such a love and respect to a human being. This love and relevant experience bring up a large insight to discern good and bad, to be guided by even when there is no concrete knowledge.

1. I borrowed this expression from Mr Sergey Kovalev - one of the most famous soviet political prisoners and human rights activists.

"Advocate" legal magazine, #4, 2007