Oleksandr Lytvynenko: Our defense will not be stable without the comprehensive transition to norms and values intrinsic to the democratic countries
During the reforming of the security and intelligence services, it is necessary to ensure the transition to norms and values of the democratic countries. This was stated by Deputy Secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine Oleksandr Lytvynenko during his speech at the III International conference "Governance and reforming of the national security and intelligence services: best international practices", which was held in Kyiv today.
Mr. Lytvynenko in his speech noted that the widespread awareness of the society and political forces that special services are the essential, key element of the maintenance of the national security system, has become one of the main achievements and changes of the recent years. "This is a necessary basis for ensuring human rights and freedoms, for securing the free democratic development of the country", - he said.
At the same time, Deputy Secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine noticed that it is impossible to ensure effective completion of these tasks without the full-scale implementation of the principles established in the countries of the Euro-Atlantic community.
"Considering the issue of the development and reforming of the intelligence and security services, we should take two priorities as a premise. The first one should be the maintenance of the national security, the ability of the special services to complete the tasks defined by the Constitution of Ukraine, the legislation, the effective strategic documents. But it is impossible to ensure the effective completion of these tasks without the full-scale implementation of the principles established in the countries of the Euro-Atlantic community", - he noted.
Mr. Lytvynenko added that "without the clear, comprehensive transition to norms and values intrinsic to the democratic states, our defense will not be stable, we will not be able to realize our objectives and priorities".
Deputy Secretary of the NSDC Ukraine also mentioned that the democratic civilian control involves not only supervision over the security structures, but also responsibility of the politicians for the approved governmental decisions.
The III International conference "Governance and reforming of the national security and intelligence services: best international practices" is held by the Razumkov Centre in cooperation with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). Its goal is to define the key challenges and priorities of reforms, to identify the "weak points" of the civilian control and relevant decisions, to find out more about the best European practices and their possible application in Ukraine, to determine the need for developing the necessary capabilities.