Ukrainian civil society documents more than 100,000 incidents of international crimes with EU support

Since February 2022, Ukrainian human rights organisations have collected more than 100,000 documented incidents of war crimes, committed during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. This work will now be continued as part of the EU-funded project ‘Documentation and analysis of international crimes committed by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation after 24 February 2022, support for victims of these crimes and raising awareness of them’, launched in Lviv on 6 July.

The project is implemented by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, ADC Memorial Brussels, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, and the Centre for Civil Liberties.

At the launch event, representatives of human rights organisations discussed the role of civil society in documenting international crimes, and highlighted the critical importance of international support for continuing this work.

“Since the beginning of Russia’s aggression in 2014, civil society organisations have become some of the key actors in documenting international crimes. They were the first to collect victims’ testimonies, record human rights violations, support those affected, and submit collected materials to national and international justice mechanisms. Following the start of the full-scale invasion, the scale of this work increased dramatically,” the EU Delegation to Ukraine said in a press release. 

Participants in the discussion said documenting international crimes is not only a tool for future court proceedings but also helps to establish the fate of missing persons, support victims, draw the international community’s attention to Russia’s crimes, and preserve the historical memory of the war.

“A particularly important objective of the Project is to assist Ukrainian law enforcement agencies in investigating alleged war crimes at both the national and international levels through the use of various international judicial and quasi-judicial mechanisms,” said Oleksandr Pavlichenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. 

The EU contribution to the project is €720,000. The project will last for 24 months. 

Find out more

Press release

Documenting war crimes in Ukraine