In framework of permanent cooperation with international organizations, our Association informed this July the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances for elaboration the Committee’s General Comment № 2 on women, girls and enforced disappearances in framework of its Concept Note, adopted on April.
ARC’s submission on those issues, published at UN official web-sources this week, reminded that since the beginning of the occupation of the Crimea in 2014 by Russia and till 2021 OHCHR has documented 43 cases of enforced disappearances in Crimea; these mostly took the form of abductions and kidnappings and the victims and included 4 women.
ARC’s submission added that after Russia’s broad-scale aggression started against Ukraine, there were currently 403 Ukrainian women in Russian captivity, many of them illegally detained civilians, as the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War informed in May 2024.
Our submission pointed to some examples mentioned in the ODIHR OSCE Interim Report on that issue and stressed the importance of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, dated June 25, 2024, on applications 20958/14 and 38334/18 of Ukraine against Russia regarding Crimea, and dated July 9, 2025, on applications 8019/16, 43800/14, 28525/20, and 11055/22 of Ukraine and The Netherlands against Russia.
Those judgments established Russia’s systemic practice regarding enforced disappearances in the occupied Crimea and at the occupied Ukraine’s mainland; such victims included women and girls.
ARC’s submission also gave the example of Mrs. Chernukha Tamara from Chernomorske (Ak-Mechet) in the Crimea, who worked as a “paramedic of the emergency medical care team” and was kidnapped by aggressor’s punishers on February 6, 2025.
Regarding the draft of the General Comment № 2, our submission added that situations of hostilities and interstate conflict, as well as relevant demands of the Rome Statute, Geneva Conventions, and Additional Protocols, must be taken into account regarding enforced disappearances committed against women and children, who are victims of trafficking, deportation, indoctrination, and sexual violence in the conflict and “grey” zones or who reside in the foreign-occupied territory.
Also the victims’ rights to access to justice and effective remedies must be researched in context of execution the decision of international courts and of foreign national courts, connected with interstate conflicts, with the foreign effective control and international crimes, including duty to counteract enforced disappearances against women and girls, ARC pointed to the UN Committee.
