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Monday, September 18, 2006

Ukraine

Ukraine: International Religious Freedom Report 2006
Released by the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The Jewish community has a long history in the country. Estimates of the size of the current Jewish population varied. According to a 2001 census, the State Committee of Statistics estimated that there were 103,600 Jews in the country. Some Jewish community leaders, however, said the Jewish population could be as high as 300 thousand. The 2004 All-Ukraine Sociological Service poll appeared to corroborate the higher figure. Observers believed that 35 to 40 percent of the Jewish population was active communally; there were 240 registered Jewish organizations. Most observant Jews were Orthodox. There were 104 Chabad-Lubavitch communities in the country. The Progressive (Reform) Jewish movement had forty-eight communities.

This report is submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. The law provides that the secretary of state, with the assistance of the ambassador at large for international religious freedom, shall transmit to Congress "an Annual Report on International Religious Freedom supplementing the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom."

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