As our Association has already reported, on December 15, the UN General Assembly approved the next annual and strengthened resolution on human rights in the Crimea. Also on December 15, the General Assembly adopted the annual resolution 77/204 “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, the initial draft of which was promoted at the UN by Russia.
As experts point out, under the guise of “fighting neo-Nazism” in this resolution, the aggressor annually promoted, in particular, manipulative theses about “protecting monuments of the Great Patriotic War” and accused anyone, of course, except himself, of “glorifying Nazism.” The aggressor’s cynicism was reflected in part of the draft’s theses, built in such a way, that there would be no arguments against them – because no one in the world would publicly support neo-Nazism, of course, except for Russia itself.
But, as Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya reported, the text of the initial draft of this resolution in November 2022 included an amendment stating that the UN General Assembly notes with alarm that the Russian Federation has sought to “justify” its territorial aggression against Ukraine on the purported “basis” of eliminating neo-Nazism, and underlines that the pretextual use of neo-Nazism to “justify” territorial aggression seriously undermines genuine attempts to combat neo-Nazism.
This paragraph, included in the final text of the current resolution 77/204, was taken by the delegates of the General Assembly from the Report of the relevant UN Special Rapporteur Professor Tendai Achiume A/HRC/50/61 precisely on the topic of the resolution. This Special Rapporteur’s document was worked out in 2022 in parallel with the promotion by the aggressor in the UN of Russia’s manipulative narratives, and the UN could not then ignore this UN Report, after it was submitted to the General Assembly, when processing the “Russian” draft resolution 77/204.
As our Association has already noted, the said Report A/HRC/50/61 included theses of ARC submission on systematic violations of human rights and humanitarian norms, including racial and ethnic discrimination in the occupied Crimea since 2014. The Report acknowledges that the ARC, in its submissions to the UN, outlined how Russia criminally used numerous “justifications” for this military aggression, in particular the alleged “need to de-Nazify Ukraine”.
It should be noted that the UN General Assembly separately thanked in resolution 77/204 the non-governmental structures that provided materials for Report A/HRC/50/61; the corresponding interaction of the ARC with the specialized structures of the UN on informing about war crimes and massive violations of human rights by the Russian occupiers will be continued and strengthened.
