On May 29 our Association’s expert Professor Borys Babin took active participation in virtual Consultation with civil society “Land and the right to adequate housing”, held by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, for preparation UN forthcoming report on land governance and its impact on the right to adequate housing, to be presented in October 2025 to the General Assembly.
Among other issues, the UN report will address: land governance issues, affordability of land and the impact of financialization, the process and practice of communal land, the social function of land property, eminent domain and public interest, and land rights defenders and their safety and freedom.
In own statement expert Babin thanked the UN Rapporteur for a special attention to relevant issues and stressed that our Association believes that the next urgent, immediate steps of the UN Rapporteur on protecting the right for housing and for lands for Ukrainians, in the conditions of ongoing interstate conflict and hostilities, must be done, including all observation procedures and visits to Ukraine.
Dr. Babin added that war crimes, committed by Russian invaders during ongoing hostilities, are connected with absolutely clear militaristic targets in maximal destruction of the civil object including apartment buildings and private houses in Ukraine, also as destroying the land plots economic and environmental capacities.
Expert Babin stressed that regarding issues of land governance and land management and the right to adequate housing we want to remind on such features of conflict situations, like land pollution in hostilities zone and on illegal land plots confiscation and “nationalisation”, as it happens in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea, where the land rights of the Indigenous Crimean Tatar People are grossly violated.
Reminding previous ARC’s submission to UN Special Rapporteur regarding those issues, Dr. Babin described challenges to right to housing in land aspects, connected with aggressor-committed pollution of Ukrainian lands by explosive materials, mines and toxics near frontline, on Russia-occupied territories, riparian areas and zones of Russia’s drone and missile attacks, also as with illegal land plots “nationalisation” and confiscation at occupied territories.
Dr. Babin reminded in own report on the destruction the dam of Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant on Dnipro River by Russian military units, which happened on June, 2023, also as about damage, caused by the catastrophe that occurred on December 15, 2024 in the waters of the Black Sea south of the Kerch Strait with the Russian tankers “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239”.
ARC’s cooperation with UN bodies on reflecting and describing relevant Russia’s gross international law and human rights violations will be continued.
