By Olga Golovina
On January 1, Ukraine became a full member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a landmark moment in its efforts to see senior Russian figures tried for war crimes.
At the same time, Ukraine’s judicial system is processing nearly 150,000 further cases. Oleksandr Pavlichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, told IWPR’s Olga Golovina that Kyiv needed to lay out a new strategy for the coming year, given the overwhelming number of cases.
“We need to have a strategic goal – how and whom to prosecute, so that these prosecutions are real, and not just in absentia,” he said. “It is important to understand that thousands of criminal proceedings can be opened, but if the right strategy is not chosen and real investigations are not carried out, this will not lead to prosecutions.”
Oleksandr Pavlichenko: The first is the array of war crimes to date, of which, according to official statistics, there are almost 147,000 since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. The number of registered crimes that require investigation as well as the identification of victims and perpetrators is a major challenge.
Separate challenges are the investigation of categories of crimes that are classified as those directed primarily against human life and health, in areas outside government control. These are cases of murder of civilians, execution of prisoners of war, torture, torture with sexual violence and the identification of specific criminals. Unfortunately, these cases arepoorly investigated due to lack of access.
A further large category of criminal proceedings concerns the destruction of facilities andproperty – this is a separate category that requires the development of a system of compensation and restitution, even without taking into account how the crimes will be investigated and those responsible for these........