THE RIGHT OF WAR VETERANS TO ACCESS TO JUSTICE IN THE CONTEXT OF FORMING A BARRIER-FREE ENVIRONMENT IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive theoretical and legal understanding of the right of war veterans (women and men) to access justice through the prism of the concept of barrier-free accessibility, as well as clarifying the potential of electronic justice as a tool for eliminating physical, digital, informational and communicative obstacles to the realisation of this right under martial law and the post-war recovery of Ukraine, when the number of veterans is rapidly growing and the traditional model of court proceedings proves unable to take their specific needs into account. Methods. The methodological basis of the study comprises the dialectical method, which made it possible to trace the development of barrier-free accessibility from physical to digital and procedural, the formal-legal method (for interpreting procedural rules), systemic-structural analysis (for distinguishing the components of barrier-free accessibility in the field of justice), the comparative-legal method (for correlating national and international standards of access to justice), and a hermeneutic approach to interpreting the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. Results. It is substantiated that barrier-free access to justice for veterans constitutes an independent manifestation of the rule of law principle and a derivative guarantee of the right to a fair trial, which is not limited to the formal possibility of applying to a court. It is demonstrated that the subsystems Electronic Cabinet, Electronic Court, and videoconferencing facilities ensure not only procedural economy but also perform a rights-guaranteeing function by providing reasonable accommodation of judicial procedures to the needs of persons with war-related disabilities. It is established that procedural economy should not be equated with barrier-free accessibility. The study reveals that the current regulation governing participation in court hearings via videoconference outside court premises, despite the amendments introduced in 2024, continues to preserve barriers for witnesses and other participants, while digital inequality may transform technological advantages into a new form of obstacle to effective access to justice. Conclusions. The author concludes that it is necessary to enshrine barrier-free accessibility as a principle of civil procedure in Article 2 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, to introduce procedural safeguards against the re-traumatisation of veterans, and to supplement Article 212 of this Code with the court’s duty to take into account the individual needs of a participant caused by their state of health. It is argued that the principle of procedural proportionality is the methodological key to balancing the requirement of barrier-free accessibility and the principle of equality of the parties. Directions for improving legislation are proposed, in particular the standardisation of digital accessibility requirements for electronic services.