In framework of permanent cooperation with UN bodies our Association sent special submission for a thematic study by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on new technologies in relevant area.
Working Group researches how new technologies are applicable for facilitating the search for disappeared persons and the investigation and promotion of accountability for this crime, to discuss this issue on UN Human Rights Council session in September 2023.
Relevant submission, prepared by Association’s expert, professor Borys Babin, pointed the UN Working Group on issues of the deportation of Ukrainian minors by Russian invaders since spring 2022. ARC stressed that it is hard for relatives to find the victims for the enforced disappearances, as Russia-controlled punitive structures use full control over mobile communications and Internet on the occupied territories of Ukraine.
ARC’s submission reminded to UN bodies about disappearance of a big group of Ukrainian youth, located till December 2022 in Yevpatoria, Crimea, where the Russian occupiers concentrated up to 2,000 criminally “evacuated” Kherson children in September, 2022 on the basis of Ukrainian children’s sanatoriums seized illegally in 2014.
Submission stressed that next search of this children and returning them to Ukraine’s controlled territory, as the PACE and Euro Parliament resolutions 2482 (2023) and 2022/2049 directly point, demand usage modern technologies, including genetic expertise. ARC’s materials regarding relevant issue were published on UN web-sources and next co-operation with UN mechanisms on this issue will be essential.
