T4P
The beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression in Ukraine in February 2022 has clearly demonstrated that now we are living in a situation where the law doesn’t work.
Russian troops are daily breaking all international rules: they are destroying residential buildings, schools, churches, hospitals and museums. They are shooting at the evacuation corridors. They are torturing people in filtration camps. They forcibly take Ukrainian children to Russia. They ban Ukrainian language and culture. They are abducting, raping, robbing and killing on the occupied territories.
Russia wants to convince the entire world that democracy, rule of law and human rights are fake values. Because they couldn’t protect anyone in the world. Russia wants to convince that a state with a powerful military potential and nuclear weapons can break international order, dictate its will to the entire international community, and even forcibly change internationally recognized borders.
And if Russia succeeds, it will encourage other authoritarian leaders to do the same. And the entire United Nations’ architecture, any international organization or treaty can’t stop it. The international system of peace and security doesn’t work anymore.
Can we rely on the law or does only brutal force matter? How can we, people, in the 21st century defend people – their lives, their freedom and their dignity? Our mission is to ensure that war criminals become accountable for their war crimes to prevent that unpunished evil grows.
This is a courageous step. But we must do it for our common future. And when you can’t rely on the legal mechanisms, you can always rely on people. Ordinary people have much more impact that they can even imagine. Ordinary people in different countries can change history quicker than the United Nations’ intervention. Stand with us – support the struggle of the Ukrainian people, make the Ukrainian voice tangible, take an active position! There are so many things that you can do and there is no limitation in state borders! Check our “Acts” section to learn about simple acts you can do.
The Center for Civil Liberties is a Ukrainian human rights organization and the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
It has been actively working for the protection of human rights in Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) region for 15 years. Its main priority now is the restoration of Justice for all victims of war in Ukraine. In addition to advocating for accountability for the war crimes, the organization states that the Russian Federation should be expelled from the UN Security Council for systematic violations of the UN charter. The impunity for the previous Russian crimes (in Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Syria, Libya, Mali, in other countries) leads it to commit new evil with new force around the world.
Human rights defenders of the Center for Civil Liberties are convinced that sustainable peace is impossible without Justice.
The Anti-corruption Action Center (AntAC) is a Ukrainian civil society organization established in 2012, fighting corruption as a root cause of the critical state-building issues in Ukraine.
After the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine, AntAC extended the list of its activities in order to meet new challenges posed by the war. On the international level, the AntAC works on the European Union and NATO membership of Ukraine; confiscation of Russian assets abroad for Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction; collaboration with the international partners to bring more support for Ukraine.
At the same time, internally AntAC remains a ‘watchdog’ for legislative processes, judicial reform and other democratic transformations, including functioning of the anti-corruption infrastructure, to ensure that Ukraine meets the EU membership requirements and transparency standards.
War turns people into numbers, but they are not numbers. The life of each person matters and it’s critical to return people their names by prosecuting war crimes.
The Center for Civil Liberties has been documenting war crimes since 2014 when Russia started its aggression in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. In 2022, with the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, these documenting efforts were scaled up and a global initiative Tribunal for Putin was launched.
Now, it’s a joint initiative that brings together 24 human rights civil society organizations from Ukraine. They document events with features of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, as they are defined in the Rome Statute.
We work to ensure Justice for all victims of war, regardless of their social position, the type or level of cruelty they suffered from, the resonance of their cases.
