war crimes
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GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: ‘We must reaffirm the relationship between the rule of law and human rights’
CIVICUS speaks with Francesca Restifo, Senior Human Rights Lawyer and UN Representative of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), about the deficits of the global governance system and civil society’s proposals for reform.Established in 1947, the International Bar Association is the world’s leading organisation of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. With a membership of over 80,000 lawyers and 190 bar associations and law societies spanning all continents, it influences the development of international law and helps shape the future of the legal profession throughout the world. The IBAHRI was created in 1995 to provide human rights training and technical assistance for legal practitioners and institutions, strengthening their capacity to promote and protect human rights effectively under a just rule of law.
What does the IBAHRI do, and how does it interact with international human rights organisations?
A leading institution in international fact-finding, the IBAHRI produces expert reports with key recommendations, delivering timely and reliable information on human rights and the legal profession. It supports lawyers and judges who are arbitrarily harassed, intimidated or arrested through advocacy at the United Nations (UN) and domestic levels and provides training and trial monitoring. We advocate for the advancement of human rights in the administration of justice, focusing on UN human rights mechanisms and pushing onto the UN’s agenda justice issues such as judicial independence and protection for all legal professions as essential building blocks to sustaining or reinstating the rule of law.
To achieve this, the IBAHRI also trains lawyers, judges and bar associations to promote and protect human rights at the domestic level and engage with UN human rights mechanisms. For example, the IBAHRI is working with Afghan lawyers and judges in exile, and particularly with women, to denounce the ongoing gender persecution in Afghanistan. The IBAHRI works with lawyers and academics to promote jurisprudence to punish the specific crime of gender-based apartheid.
We are also supporting Ukrainian lawyers on issues of accountability for war crimes, including via domestic jurisdiction and training them on international fair trail standards.
To what extent do current global governance institutions protect the rule of law around the world?
In January 2023, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that ‘We are at grave risk of the Rule of Lawlessness’. Today, adherence to the rule of law is more important than ever. As Guterres pointed out, from the smallest village to the global stage, the rule of law is all that stands between peace and brutal conflict or repression.
In Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine, we are witnessing systematic war crimes committed by states. We are witnessing increasing violations of the UN Charter with the annexation, resulting from the threat or use of force, of a state’s territory by another state.
The ongoing devastating conflicts in Syria and Yemen have resulted in atrocities, thousands of deaths and incommensurable suffering. Unconstitutional changes in government are deplorably back in fashion. The collapse of the rule of law in Myanmar has led to a cycle of violence, repression and severe human rights violations. In Afghanistan and Iran, systematic attacks against women’s and girls’ rights that amount to gender persecution are creating an unprecedented regime of gender-based apartheid. In Belarus, Russia, Venezuela and many other places, authoritarian regimes are silencing the opposition and cracking down on civil society and civic space, repressing peaceful protests with excessive force and violence. In Haiti we see a severe institutional crisis coupled with an almost non-existent rule of law, leading to widespread human rights abuses and the escalation of crime rates.
At a time plagued with conflicts, division, crackdown and mistrust, states continue to contravene international law with impunity. Created to anchor the protection of rights, the multilateral system is in deep crisis. In the aftermath of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we must reaffirm the strong and mutually reinforcing relationship between the rule of law, accountability and human rights.
Do you view these failures as linked to structural flaws in the global governance system?
The collapse of the rule of law, coupled with failures by the UN system to establish just and effective responses and address global challenges, has undermined trust in leaders and institutions. These challenges are interconnected and can only be addressed by interconnected responses, through a reinvigorated multilateralism, placing the UN, its Charter and its values at the centre of joint efforts.
We are facing a crisis of trust, a disconnect between people and the institutions that are supposed to serve and protect them, with many people left behind and no longer confident that the system works for them. We need to rethink ways to ensure effective responses.
In his Our Common Agenda report, the UN Secretary-General emphasised the need for the UN to support states, communities and people in rebuilding the social contract as a foundation for sustaining peace, stressing that justice is an essential dimension of the social contract.
However, we witness ever-increasing justice gaps, with many justice systems delivering only for the few. It has been estimated that 1.5 billion people have unmet justice needs. In many places around the world, women effectively enjoy only three quarters of the legal rights of men. Legal disempowerment prevents women, vulnerable groups and victims from using the law to protect and defend themselves.
When states fail, the UN should mobilise against impunity and hold perpetrators to account through fair, independent judicial proceedings.
What are the most needed reforms in the area of global governance?
First, it is time to rethink, renew and rebuild trust in international institutions and support governments to rebuild the social contract with their people and within societies. UN institutions must start by rebuilding, restoring and sustaining the rule of law, both internationally and domestically, by supporting victims and survivors and providing access to justice, remedy and reparation. To do so, a more inclusive, effective and principled multilateral system is urgently needed.
Communities need to see results reflected in their daily lives. People need to see their rights realised and need to know they can seek justice if their rights are violated.
Means are within reach, but they need to be better used and reformed to ensure their effectiveness. From the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to the UN Human Rights Council, with its accountability mechanisms including fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry, there are institutions and mechanisms to promote and reinforce the rule of law. But they need to be enabled to provide effective solutions. For instance, if the Human Rights Council’s commissions of inquiry collect, analyse and preserve evidence of atrocity crimes, there must be states willing to use that evidence to bring cases before the ICJ.
The International Criminal Court is the central institution of the international criminal justice system, but the veto power enshrined in article 27(3) of the UN Charter systematically impedes the prosecution of the crime of aggression under the Rome Statute. All states have a responsibility to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and ensure that such crimes are ended and punished when they occur, as per the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law. However, we have recently seen the excessive use of the veto preventing the UN Security Council (UNSC) from exercising its function to address the most severe threats to international peace and security. Permanent UNSC members have a particular responsibility in this regard, given the powers vested in the Council to adopt effective measures to restore international peace and security and prevent or end such crimes. A reform of the UN system is needed to limit the veto, and in the meantime, we need to think of creative ways to overcome it.
We need to empower justice systems to better and more effectively use the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes under international law and hold perpetrators to account. Through international cooperation, states should support domestic trials. For example, UN member states must be more proactive in supporting Ukraine’s justice system to conduct effective investigations and prosecute international crimes with fair trial guarantees.
Some interesting developments that may help address accountability gaps deserve some attention. Although international law is largely concerned with states’ rather than individuals’ obligations, the so-called Global Magnitsky Acts and the system of individual sanctions represent an interesting paradigm shift in the field of accountability for violations of international human rights law, including regarding corruption.
The Global Magnitsky Acts have been considered one of the most promising ways to address serious human rights violations and corruption in the future. They were established in response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail cell in 2009, following which his client and US-born financier Bill Browder led a 10-year fight to strengthen national legal frameworks and responses to alleged gross violations of human rights. This led to a legal revolution in several countries across regions, including Canada, the USA and the European Union and its member states.
How is civil society in general, and the IBAHRI specifically, advocating for reforms?
Lawyers are at the forefront of the struggle for the protection of human rights. Without an independent, competent legal profession, victims of human rights violations are unable to exercise their right to redress. Lawyers, judges and bar associations have a vital role to play in promoting accountability, ending impunity and ensuring remedy for victims and survivors.
As part of the world’s leading organisation of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies, the IBAHRI is ideally placed to engage the global legal profession with such mechanisms and to advocate for the advancement of human rights and the independence of the legal profession.
We work with the legal professions at large to sustain the rule of law, ensure implementation of international human rights standards, enhance judicial independence and fair trial guarantees and encourage an effective and gender-responsive administration of justice. The IBAHRI supports the work of lawyers and legal professionals to bring about accountability for war and atrocity crimes, provide legal defence to those arbitrarily and unjustly detained, improve legal frameworks, promote the common acceptance of legal rules and encourage greater engagement with the UN system.
Get in touch with the IBAHRI through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@IBAHRI on Twitter.
This interview was conducted as part of the ENSURED Horizon research project funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. -
Joint Letter to Human Rights Council: Upholding international law in South Sudan
To Permanent Representatives of member and observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council
RE: Renewing the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan and addressing the need for accountability for past and on-going crimes under international law and human rights violations in South Sudan
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UKRAINE: ‘If we share information, leaders won’t be able to turn blind eye to human rights violations’
CIVICUS speaks with Yaropolk Brynykh of Truth Hounds about Ukrainian civil society’s response to the Russian invasion.Truth Hounds is a civil society organisation (CSO) aimed at fighting against the impunity of perpetrators of international crimes and grave human rights violations through investigation, documentation, monitoring, advocacy and problem-solving assistance for vulnerable groups. Jointly with Brussels-based International Partnership for Human Rights, The Truth Hounds team has carried out over 50 fact-finding missions to document war crimes in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
What are the main ways in which your organisation is responding to the Russian invasion?
I’m a board member of the Ukrainian human rights organisation Truth Hounds, which has focused on documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity in war contexts since 2014. We wouldn’t be able to tackle this mission without a highly qualified team of human rights professionals with experience in conflict areas – not only in the east of Ukraine and occupied Crimea but also in neighbouring countries, including in Nagorno Karabakh, a territory disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Having prepared three extensive submissions to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, we have developed thorough knowledge of international standards and best practices of evidence collection and systematisation of war crimes.
Thus, when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, I immediately joined a field team of investigators working day and night to document Russian war crimes in our country. Since then, our team members have collected evidence of indiscriminate shelling, targeted attacks against civilians, ecological crimes and other violations of customs of war. On the basis of that, our team has already prepared and published 13 reports revealing grave human rights violations and war crimes committed by the Russian military.
Most of our current efforts in response to the Russian invasion focus on monitoring human rights violations and war crimes committed by the Russian army, international advocacy, support for professional groups and humanitarian and legal aid to people in need.
Our team also supports the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office in chasing perpetrators of war crimes through documentation and monitoring of human rights violations. We also share reports and evidence as much as possible to provide international judicial bodies, including the ICC, with evidence that can one day be used to bring perpetrators to justice.
In the context of the war, we also understand the importance of information, so our team works to produce accurate and reliable information as quickly as possible and shares it with international media groups. We believe that if we share information about Ukraine, global leaders won’t be able to turn a blind eye to the human rights violations that Russia is perpetrating here. Our nation needs support from the whole world; hence, our current mission is to deliver facts from the field to the international community.
How is the conflict affecting Ukrainian civil society’s work?
Ukrainian civil society is in the same boat as the whole nation, and as everyone else, we are trying to keep working despite the difficult circumstances. Some civil society representatives, including well-known human rights defenders, have joined the army to fight and protect the country. Others have had to leave Ukraine, but they are doing their best to operate in exile within their limited possibilities.
While many CSOs moved to western Ukraine to try and resume their activities despite limited technical and financial opportunities, others decided to stay in the eastern and southern parts of the country, to cover humanitarian needs and help with the logistics of relocation of the civilian population. But their capacities are down to a minimum because they are not able to receive much support from international CSOs.
Only a tiny segment of civil society took on board information about a possible Russian invasion and was prepared enough. They have managed to continue working for the past weeks. But even this small group cannot be as effective as it used to be because of the need to hide in shelters during chaotic air and rocket attacks.
Overall, civil society is under tremendous mental pressure, which will have long-lasting effects. This will become yet another challenge for the country once the war is over. Civil society will suffer from post-traumatic syndrome.
What should the international community do to help?
Ukrainian civil society needs advocacy and communications support. Our partners must help us deliver our messages to our allies and governments worldwide. Needless to say, Ukraine cannot win this fight alone. But we share the same democratic values and we need your support.
All of us in contemporary Ukrainian civil society grew up believing in democratic values and we heard time and again that these were the most important principles for the western world. Now we are fighting for these values, we ask the international community to amplify our voices. If it doesn’t, it will be clear that western countries choose their business interests over democratic values. We don’t want to be let down.
Ukraine also needs the humanitarian assistance of international organisations. We understand how hard it is for organisations such as the World Health Organization and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to organise proper fieldwork. But there is one thing even harder: explaining to people from war-affected regions why these organisations disappear when they need them the most.
Since 2014, when Russia occupied Crimea and invaded Ukraine for the first time this century, Ukrainians have seen thousands of international organisations’ representatives spending their time here, mostly in expensive hotels and restaurants. We were told that were here to try and save Ukrainian lives. But now that Ukrainian lives are in fact under immediate threat, international organisations are not here anymore. For us, they are now invisible and silent.
Civic space in Ukraine is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Truth Hounds through itswebsite orFacebook page. -
UKRAINE: ‘International organisations are clearly not up to their historic responsibilities’
CIVICUS speaks with Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the board of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), about human rights violations in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion and civil society’s response.Established in 2007, CCL is a Ukrainian civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes human rights and democratic values in Ukraine and Europe.
How has Ukrainian civil society organised in the wake of the Russian invasion?
Ukrainian civil society came together and issued the Kyiv Declaration, an appeal made by 100 civil society leaders that includes six points: to establish safe zones that protect civilians from air and ground attacks; to provide immediate defensive military aid, including lethal and non-lethal weapons; to implement crippling economic and financial sanctions to undermine Russia’s war machine; to provide immediate aid to local humanitarian organisations; to freeze the assets and revoke the visas of Putin’s cronies; and to provide the technology and support required to record war crimes.
There are a lot of CSOs in Ukraine, and therefore lots of initiatives happening. CCL has an initiative called Euromaidan SOS, which we launched a while back, in 2013, to provide legal help to activists detained during the Revolution of Dignity. This initiative involves hundreds of volunteers and focuses on legal and logistics support, humanitarian assistance and the documentation of war crimes to help bring perpetrators to justice.
We work alongside international organisations, foreign governments and the Ukrainian diaspora. We have a campaign dedicated to the establishment of humanitarian corridors and we work with partners in several countries to provide aid in occupied cities. Russians have deliberately isolated occupied cities, attacking people who try to evacuate and obstructing humanitarian assistance. We are working to help those people.
We also engage with partner human rights organisations in European countries, such as France and Germany, so that they put pressure on their national governments. Some countries have continued doing business as usual with Russia, even though they have repudiated the war. We need their governments to make the kind of political decisions that will save Ukrainian lives.
As well as producing information to disseminate abroad so that the world knows what is happening in Ukraine, we use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread information among people within Ukraine. One of the ways Russian invaders try to isolate the local population is by cutting off communications. We work to bypass these obstacles and provide life-saving information regarding evacuation procedures, medical care and official decisions, among other things.
We have all adapted our work to the needs of the moment. I for instance am a human rights lawyer, so my field is the law, but I have somewhat shifted my priorities. I do not have military experience or expertise, but I have had to learn a number of things to be able to help. My work now not only involves research on war crimes for the quest for international justice, but also advocating and finding ways to pressure for the war to be stopped. So while I still conduct work in the field of law and gather evidence for future use, I also do other things, such as connecting with international organisations to try to get them to maintain their presence in Ukraine.
What are you asking the international community to do?
We work to force the international community to act in ways that are consistent with their words. Western politicians have expressed their support for Ukraine and its people, but their actions say otherwise. They have established economic sanctions against Russia, but there are still too many loopholes. A clear example is that of the SWIFT network, which has banned only a few Russian banks. Sberbank, one of the biggest banks, has not been excluded. We want all Russian and Belarusian banks expelled from the system, which would hopefully obstruct funding for the war and put enough pressure so that they will push for stopping it. Another urgent measure would be to put an embargo on Russian oil and gas, which are enabling the Russian government to fund its invasion of Ukraine.
We don’t want the international community to get comfortable with what is happening in Ukraine. They must stand in solidarity with us and help us fight this. Our number one priority is to be able to defend ourselves, but we are fighting not only for ourselves but also for the values of a free world. Russia started this war because it is afraid of NATO. Putin is afraid of freedom. We hope our example will also impact on other post-soviet states and we will get to decide what our region will be like.
We want the international community to provide tangible solutions. Now that the bulk of refugees have been got to safety, it is time to reach for a more ambitious goal. We need strategic measures that will stop war crimes and force the invasion itself to stop. In occupied territories, we have already seen people being beaten up, arrested and tortured. Detentions, kidnappings and torture are being used against the brave Ukrainians who go out with the Ukrainian flag and face Russian soldiers. It is only a matter of time before human rights defenders, journalists, religious leaders and civil society activists and organisations start to be deliberately targeted. We need to find ways to protect people.
What is your assessment of the international response to the Russian invasion so far?
We feel and appreciate the huge wave of solidarity across the globe, but it is not enough to address our situation. What we need is a serious response to the Kyiv Declaration.
Unfortunately, our advocacy asks have not been met. International organisations and our allies are focusing on providing humanitarian assistance to refugees outside Ukraine. This is very important because there are more than three million Ukrainian refugees now. But it is also the easiest thing to do in this horrible situation, when tens of millions remain in Ukraine, where war is still happening. The people who have stayed also need protection and humanitarian assistance, and they need it even more urgently.
This is why we urged the establishment of a no-fly zone and the supply of long-range distance weapons, defence systems and fighter planes. We have been asking for weeks but have not received anything yet. What we got instead from the international community has been drones, that’s all. But drones will not protect civilians from Russian attacks.
Our own allies sometimes offer us aid that is not useful. Instead of listening to our requests, people who have no idea what it is to be under this kind of attack insist on providing the help they think we need. For instance, I have received calls from international CSOs who wanted to send us vests and helmets, which hopefully would arrive in Kyiv within a few weeks. That sounded funny because right now we don’t know what will happen within the next few hours. I had to explain to them that if Russians came to occupy Kyiv and found us wearing their nice helmets, they would kill us all. Their helmets won’t protect us from the dangers we face.
I think the architecture of the international governance system is not working properly because it has a fundamental design defect. Russia is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The mandate for this body is to maintain international peace and security, but we have seen the total opposite of that take place in Ukraine. And there is also a lack of understanding of their responsibilities by those who are in positions where they could help. When the war started, international organisations evacuated their staff from Kyiv and other places under attack. International organisations are clearly not up to their historic responsibilities.
I remain in Kyiv and have spent yet another horrible night in which residential buildings have been targeted by Russian missiles. I really don’t understand what the international community is waiting for. We need their urgent help. The people who died last night in Kyiv couldn’t wait.
Civic space in Ukraine is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Center for Civil Liberties through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@ccl_ua on Twitter. -
UKRAINE: ‘The presence of international organisations is key to ensure safe humanitarian corridors’
CIVICUS speaks with Sasha Romantsova, executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), about Ukrainian civil society’s response to the Russian invasion.Established in 2007, CCL is a Ukrainian civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes human rights and democratic values in Ukraine and Europe.
What are the main ways in which your organisation is responding to the Russian invasion?
In the face of the unprecedented situation in Ukraine, on the first day of the Russian invasion CCL renewed its Euromaidan SOS initiative. This was launched in 2013 to provide legal help to activists detained during the peaceful protests held in the context of the Maidan Revolution, or Revolution of Dignity, which erupted in response to the then-president’s sudden decision not to sign a political and free trade agreement with the European Union.
This initiative, which brings together hundreds of volunteers, is now working on various aspects of Russia’s human rights violations in Ukraine. More specifically, our volunteers are documenting war crimes and gathering information about prisoners and missing persons.
Other volunteers help spread the word about what is going on in Ukraine through our social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter. They share useful information 24 hours a day. They publish content in various languages on YouTube. There is a whole group of volunteers who provide translations and specialists who tirelessly work on video editing.
At the international level, we maintain communication channels through our diaspora, international human rights networks, partners and friends. We discuss with diplomats the urgent need for the protection of human rights in Ukraine. One significant issue we have discussed is the need for the presence of the missions of international organisations to ensure safe humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from war zones.
Additionally, to respond to requests from people in need, we have created a special chatbot for the Telegram app.
We are also constantly conducting advocacy actions and campaigns, such as #CloseTheSky, supporting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s international demand for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. We are now starting a new campaign regarding the need for safe humanitarian corridors – safe evacuation routes for those fleeing the war.
Alongside us, many other human rights organisations are involved in various areas of documenting Russia’s war crimes. Additionally, there are numerous public initiatives on all fronts, among them efforts to provide humanitarian cargo and logistics, evacuate civilians and organise art events and media campaigns, including some aimed to a Russian audience. These are very important because otherwise the truth about what is happening in Ukraine would never get reach the Russian population. We maintain a database of initiatives across the country.
How is the conflict affecting Ukrainian civil society’s work?
Most CSOs have been forced to suspend their activities on the ground, and some have had to leave Ukraine for the time being. Many CSO staff members and activists who have stayed have at the very least sent their families away. There are some cities – such as Kharkov in the northeast and Mariupol in the southeast – where it is impossible for any CSO to continue to work. In other cities, such as Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, activists are being kidnapped for their work.
CCL continues to operate from Ukraine and our team members have not left the country. We are truly blessed to have a group of fantastic people who have run the Euromaidan initiative since Russia started this war.
What should the international community do to help?
Our demands to global leaders are to close the skies over Ukraine, provide weapons for our effective protection and fully enforce all the sanctions imposed on Russia, including the disconnection of all Russian banks from the SWIFT network and the cessation of oil and gas purchases from Russia.
Given that most international organisations, including the United Nations (UN), have evacuated their international staff from Ukraine due to serious threats to their lives, we urge them to send in international missions qualified to work in military conditions.
These missions’ duty should be to monitor the actions of both parties. The UN should establish an international tribunal to establish the facts of the Russian Federation’s military aggression, while the International Criminal Court should consider and promptly rule on war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. The International Committee of the Red Cross should be in charge of organising the exchange and removal of the dead from both sides.
We stress the urgent need for international presence and international monitoring of violations during the evacuation of the civilian population from destroyed cities, villages and settlements. We therefore urge international civil society to support the advancement of our demands to the governments of democratic countries and the leadership of international organisations.
Civic space in Ukraine is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Center for Civil Liberties through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@ccl_ua on Twitter.