In framework of permanent cooperation with United Nations’ bodies our Association sent submission, devoted to implementation of the UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, to UN Working group on peasants.
That ARC’s submission, prepared by Professor Borys Babin, PhDs Andrii Chvaliuk, Anna Prykhodko and others, published at UN web-sources, stressed that till 2024 more new was crimes were committed by the Russian troops in Ukraine, including destruction objects of agriculture, civil infrastructure, forests, dams and other melioration systems by mines explosions, missiles and artillery.
Submission added that corresponding negative impacts of Russian aggression against rights of Ukrainian peasants include destruction of thousands of square kilometers of plantations near frontline, as well as natural soils in the combat zone close to the Crimea, the intervention of the Russian occupiers in the melioration management and natural watercourses in Southern Ukraine.
ARC’s submission stressed that all this illegal Russia’s activities brutally violated such rights, guaranteed by UN Declaration, as right to life and to an adequate standard of living (Declaration’s article 3), right to land and territory (Declaration’s article 4), right to seeds (article 5), due to illegal confiscation and ban on usage Ukrainian sorts of seeds, right to means of agricultural production (article 6)due to its destruction and confiscation.
Occupiers also violates Declaration’s right to information (article 7) due to misinformation and propaganda, freedom to determine price and market for agricultural production (article 8) due to blockades, confiscation, “nationalization” and scams, right to biological diversity and to preserve the environment (articles 10 and 11), due to Russia-committed ecocide in Ukraine’s rural areas, and right to have access to justice (article 13).
Submission added that the deliberate destruction of the Nova Kakhovka Dam by the Russian forces in 2023 is an example of a war crime with such genocidal implications and also is an ecocidal act, and also the violation of the human right to a healthy environment, especially for rural areas inhabitants.
