On August 29, the UN published the Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into Violations, established following Human Rights Council resolution 49/1 of March 4, 2022, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Commission expressly found that the use of armed force by Russia against Ukraine was an act of aggression, as defined in resolution 3314 (XXIX) of the UN General Assembly.
The published Report is a detailed description of all the evidence collected and analyzed by the Commission since its inception, and includes a description of a selected number of cases on which the conclusions are based. In addition, the Report also contains a more detailed discussion of some general topics, including the question of accountability.
In the Report, the Commission finds that the Russian armed forces carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks in violation of international humanitarian law, some of which amounted to a war crime of causing an excessive amount of accidental death, injury or damage.
Among other things, the Commission’s investigations showed that Ukrainian children were moved or deported to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine or to Russia and in some cases, Commission’s Report states, this “amounted to war crimes”. Let us recall that since February 2022, our Association has sent more than a hundred messages and other documents to the bodies of the UN Human Rights Council, the development of which involved more than ten experts, including external ones; at least sixty of these materials were made public by the UN; interaction between the ARC and the Commission will continue.
