Hanne Severinsen served as member of the Danish Parliament 1984-2007 and joined the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1991, where she immediately got involved in the new members' transition into democracy, human rights and the rule of law. After being the rapporteur for the accession of Slovakia in 1993, she became the rapporteur for the accession and monitoring of Ukraine - and this led to a lifelong commitment to the Ukrainian civil society’s struggle to get rid of the past oppression and their struggle to become a European democracy.
The government of Ukraine was willing to sign all commitments to become a member in 1995. But not eager to fulfil. Notably, they secretly continued to apply the death penalty. In her capacity as the Assembly rapporteur on Ukraine, Mrs. Severinsen was deeply involved in fact-finding missions to see if the government was delivering on the European ideals that the Ukrainian civil society so much wanted to attain. She visited journalists in prisons and reported on the murder of the journalist Georgi Gongatze, which led to numerous critical reports and debates about Ukraine’s fulfilments of its obligations. Her involvement continued after she left the Assembly in 2008. She was an unpaid adviser to the Tymoshenko government until it was overthrown in 2010. After that, via the Danish Helsinki Committee, she followed the trials against the imprisoned former ministers and she has continued to be an election observer at all Ukrainian elections, now via the OSCE.
The project “75 women in 75 years of Council of Europe history” is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the Council of Europe with the Council of Europe and the Permanent Representations of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
