In the framework of ongoing cooperation with the United Nations bodies and officials, our Association sent a submission to the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee for its study on the achievement of social justice through the legal enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights by national courts.
This submission, prepared by Anna Prykhodko, Olesya Tsybulko, and other experts and published at the official UN web-sources now, reminds on the illegal Russian ban of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People as its representative body and of hundreds of individual applications of Crimean Tatars that were sent to the European Court of Human Rights on aspects of the repressions, discrimination, and illegal ban of the Mejlis.
The ARC submission stressed again that since 2016, Ukrainian authorities have adopted some strategic and program documents regarding processes of reintegration of Crimea after its de-occupation that included some aspects of indigenous rights’ realization, including the social, and economic rights and right to justice. Also, the stages of proceeding with the legalization of the Mejlis of Crimean Tatar People as the Representative Body of Indigenous People of Ukraine were reminded.
The ARC submission pointed out that regarding the achievement of social justice through the legal enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights by national courts, the demands of the Rome Statute, Geneva Convention, and Additional Protocols, also as models of transitional justice, must be taken into account in the conditions of hostilities, interstate conflicts, aggressions, and foreign occupation against Indigenous Peoples.
The ARC submission added that the issues of disinformation, enforced disappearances, illegal imprisonment and fines, hate speech, racial discrimination, and genocidal policy against Indigenous rights to justice in conflict zones and zones of foreign effective control, including ongoing challenges to the Indigenous’ environmental, economic, and social rights, must be taken into account by UN bodies.
Also, the role of Indigenous representative bodies, including their legalization issues and their cooperation with international structures, national authorities, NGOs, and the health and academic sectors, for securing and protecting the Indigenous rights to health, must be taken into account, including issues of relevant national courts’ activities, ARC submission summarized.
