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Strengthening International Justice: Challenges and Opportunities in the Case of Ukraine (co-hosted by Media Initiative for Human Rights, Renaissance International Foundation, Truth Hounds, Ukraine 5AM Coalition, Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG) and Zmina Human Rights Center)
Thursday, 8 December 2022, 13:00 – 15:00 Antarctica
Moderator: Roman Romanov - International Renaissance Foundation
Roman Avramenko - Truth Hounds
- The international crimes committed by Russia on Ukrainian territory include, inter alia, attacks on ukrainian cultural heritage, attacks on civilians, use of human shield, sexual and gender based violence, indiscriminate attacks, enforced disappearance …
Oiga Reshetylova - Media Initiative for Human Rights
- She introduced the types of international crimes that the Media Initiative for Human Rights focuses on, especially enforced disappearance against prisoners of war. It is composed of a group of investigative journalists who work on documenting war crimes, and identifying the perpetrators and consequences of the crimes.
- She then discussed one specific crime they focus on: enforced disappearance:
- In the Northern region of Ukraine, hundreds of people, including Ukrainian POWs and civilian detainees, were detained by Russian soldiers. They were transferred to special camps in Belarus, staying there for 1-3 days, and then being transferred to different prisons in Russia.
- It is unclear the exact place they were transferred to and the conditions there.
- In their communication with the Minister of Defence of Russia, they got the response that the civilians were detained because of their interference with the special military operation of Russia in Ukraine.
- Among the more than 1000 POWs and civilian detainees in facilities within the territory occupied by Russia, many of them are women. They suffer from not just sexual violence, but other difficulties, e.g. the lack of hygienic product, pregnancy, separation from their children.
Natalia Okhotnikova - Human Rights Centre ZMINA
- Her organisation documented more than 300 cases of enforced disappearance of Ukrainian journalists, activists, representatives of local authorities, etc.
- Many people are detained and tortured for two reasons: (1) sanction of their refusal to join Russian propaganda, (2) revenge for their pro-Ukranian events.
- Some common patterns of enforced disappearance of civilians can be identified.
Nadia Volkova - Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group
- She introduced her organisation which is composed of lawyers advocating for and representing people in pre-trial investigations, and in courts at national and international level.
- She gave some examples of victims they represented, e.g. children who were separate from their parents, victims of rape
- The challenges in prosecuting such crimes include, among others, limited domestic capacity to ensure effective prosecution and adjudication, and difficulty in seeking for universal jurisdiction over such cases.
- They got some support from international partners, e.g. they received training and mentorship from Women’s Initiative for Human Rights, and training in documenting digital evidence from Berkeley Human Rights Center.
Roman Romanov - International Renaissance Foundation
- The international community should not merely focus on aggression. We should not ignore mass-scale everyday crimes committed in different places of Ukraine and the need of victims to seek justice.
- Ukrainian groups have come to the ASP for many years, but the outcome at the Court was just an annual report on the preliminary examination. Something more should be done.
- Ukraine now has no diplomatic relationship with Russia, which makes it difficult to provide consular assistance to Ukranians in Russia. Russia does not permit organisations like ICRC to visit many of the places or to collect evidence.
- He insists that Ukraine itself should ratify the ICC Statute, not merely refer the situation to the Court on an ad hoc basis.
Q&A
Is there any work of a trust fund for victims at the domestic level, or any initiative towards setting up a reparation fund for the survivors and victims in the long term?
- This issue has not yet been discussed enough in Ukrainian societies.
- At the UN level, the recent UNGA resolution has set up an international register of all harm resulting from military aggression, but the mechanism has not yet been put into practice in Ukraine.
- The delayed mechanism causes additional harm to victims. It is not enough for international partners of Ukraine to freeze the assets of Russia, the money should be used to establish a reparation mechanism. Victims should be put in the first place.
- But some other victims consider compensation not to be in the first place at this moment. Instead, they want justice to be done and the punishment of the perpetrators.
The possibilities and challenges for prosecuting enforced disappearance?
- It is possible to identify some organised nature of the cases of enforced disappearance. For example, different units of the Russian army are located in different regions and do not have proper communication among each other, but they all know how to detain civilians and where to transfer them. It is possible to hold high level authorities of the Russian Federation responsible for the cases of enforced disappearance.
- Procedural challenges for prosecuting enforced disappearance at national level
- Enforced disappearance was added in 2018 in Ukrainian criminal code in implementing the Convention on Enforced Disappearance. This crime belongs to crimes against humanity in the Convention, the latter of which is not criminalised in Ukrainian criminal law, so enforced disappearance has not been prosecuted since 2018.
- There are complex jurisdictional issues in prosecuting enforced disappearance in Ukraine. Some crimes (e.g. war crimes) fall within the jurisdiction of State Security, while some others fall within the jurisdiction of national police. The relationship between these different jurisdictions is not clear.
- Lawyers should bring litigations on enforced disappearance, and build jurisprudence, so that we can know where to go.
Some other comments from the audience:
- Sanction as a tool for States sometimes only plays a ‘signal’ role but does not go that much. There should be legal actions to pursue the human rights violations, which makes real distinctions.
- There is the misconception that war crime would stop if there is peace, but there is no sustainable peace without justice. Many of the crimes in Ukraine result from the impunity of the crimes committed previously, e.g. those in Crimea. The most important thing is to punish the perpetrators.
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发表于 2023-1-12 17:37:38