Denial of a fair trial during Russia’s war against Ukraine will be discusse at the ICC Assembly of States Parties

Human Rights Centre ZMINA together with the Media Initiative for Human Rights and support of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court will hold a side event “Denial of a fair trial as an atrocity crime during Russia’s war against Ukraine: context, practice, law and perspectives” during the ICC Assembly of States Parties. It will take place on the 4th of December at 18:00 at the World Forum in The Hague.

The event aims to shed light on Russia’s widespread practice of the denial of the right to a fair trial both to Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in occupied territories and on the territory of the Russian Federation. Based on monitoring as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis of hundreds of court sessions, the following issues will be addressed:

• The denial of the right to a fair trial in the occupied territories: an overview of the cases, procedural violations and sentences;
• Trials as a tool of Russia’s policy of persecution targeting ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars;
• National investigation and prosecution of the denial of the right to a fair trial as a war crime under Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: status update, evidentiary challenges and the profile of perpetrators (judges, prosecutors, investigators and state officials);
• Prospect for investigating and prosecuting the denial of the right to a fair trial as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions (war crime) and the crime of persecution (crime against humanity) in the ICC: jurisdictional issues in connection with the transfer of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war for trial on the territory of the Russian Federation due to the transboundary nature of the crime.

Speakers:

• Olha Reshetylova, Head of the Media Initiative for Human Rights (Ukraine)
• Viktoriia Nesterenko, Project Manager of the Human Rights Centre ZMINA (Ukraine)
• Serghei Ostaf, LLM, MSc Policy, MBA: Director Resource Center for Democracy and Human Rights (Moldova)
• Iryna Marchuk, Associate Professor of International Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Contact person: Tetiana Zhukova, Human Rights Centre ZMINA, tz@zmina.ua, +380636343269

This event is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands under the Dutch development/foreign policy.