On September 3 the the Center for Civil Liberties venued the expert briefing in Kyiv with the presentation of the research, “Enforced Disappearances and the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction: Prospects for Prosecuting Citizens of the Russian Federation,” attended by UN officials and diplomats from Canada, Egypt, Georgia, Moldova, The Netherlands, U.S. and other states.
A relevant discussion was organized by invited experts Professor Oleh Martynenko, human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, representative of the Coordination Headquarters on the Treatment of Prisoners of War Oleh Hushchyn, and representative of the Association of Families of Prisoners of War Kateryna Nazarii.
Main issues were devoted to challenges of the universal jurisdiction proceedings against Russian war criminals in third countries, of the civil society activities on those issues, and also to the competence and mandate of the Coordination Headquarters.
ARC expert Borys Babin participated in this briefing and exchanged with its participants the Association’s achievents and analytics in area of countering the enforced disappearances in the Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine, including the Crimea.
Relevant cooperation with the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances was described,
Special attention was paid to the issues of the memorialization of victims of enforced disappearances, kidnapped by foreign occupying forces, especially in conjunction with occupiers’ hate speech, genocidal calls, and political repressions and with the interregional enforced transition of kidnapped persons.
Also Borys Babin stressed the ARC position about the relevant universal jurisdiscion proceedings, including the role of questionnaries and reports of the mentioned UN bodies, also as taking into account the situation, when Russian intelligence try to make illicit influence, realising own criminal targets, on the relatives of the kidnapped persons, residing in the democratic states.
