«Thousands of people are thought to be missing, and the Russian Federation is responsible for their fate». Valentyn Serdiuk speaks at a side-event during the 2024 Warsaw Human Dimension Conference
On 4 October, a side-event on enforced disappearances was held in Warsaw during the 2024 Warsaw Human Dimension Conference. The event was moderated by Oleksandra Romantsova, Executive Director of the Centre for Civil Liberties, while Valentyn Serdiuk, the organisation’s legal analyst, was among the speakers. Ukrainian experts also offered their advice on improving the situation with enforced disappearances.
Since the launch of the full-scale invasion, Russia has widely and systematically practised enforced disappearances (under Article 7(1)(i) of the Rome Statute) in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Evidence based on witness testimony, documentary and digital sources indicates that these disappearances are part of the Russian Federation’s coordinated policy to suppress resistance in the occupied territories through terror.
Russian servicemen, law enforcement officers, and affiliated groups would systematically target civilians deemed hostile to the Russian regime, including journalists, activists, and veterans. Victims would often face violence, unlawful detention and inadequate medical care, while their families struggled to obtain information about their whereabouts. The full extent of these crimes is still unknown because of the ongoing occupation of some of these territories.
The experts discussed this topic in greater detail for the conference attendees during the side event. Among the speakers were Olesia Skobova, Legal Counsel of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Olena Kuvaieva, Legal Counsel of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union; Oleh Hushchin, Legal Adviser of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War; and Olena Turas, a victim of enforced disappearance, who spoke about the realities of keeping women in captivity.
Valentin Serdiuk provided a detailed account of the associated legal aspects, noting: ‘Russia’s long-standing war against Ukraine and the recent years of its full-scale aggression have sparked off thousands of stories about the enforced disappearance of civilians. Regretfully, accounts of the kill lists of Ukrainians in the occupied territories, children detained in the temporarily occupied territories and taken to destinations unknown to their families, or thousands of families still looking for their relatives have become too common.
‘The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines systematic and mass enforced disappearances as a crime against humanity. Thousands of people are thought to be missing, and the Russian Federation is responsible for their fate, holding them across hundreds of different facilities without any charges or other legal status.’
Ukrainian experts offered the following recommendations on ways to put pressure on Russia to release Ukrainian civilians illegally detained by the Russian side in the course of the armed conflict:
1. Countries that have ratified the Convention call for more active application of the Convention mechanisms by instigating criminal proceedings based on the principle of universal jurisdiction in order to identify and prosecute persons involved in enforced disappearances. Relevant criminal proceedings shall be launched by both regional and national heads of the SFS and the SFS that forcibly keep civilian Ukrainians in places of detention. Under the Convention, the international search for persons accused of enforced disappearances cannot be qualified as political; therefore, Interpol should not deny putting these persons on the international wanted list. States parties to the Convention and other countries could join forces in the international search for perpetrators of enforced disappearances and facilitate their extradition or prosecution in the country of detention.
2. Develop and implement a dedicated set of sanctions against the Russian Federation in response to the existing and systematic practice of enforced disappearances used by the Russian Federation, ultimately putting the necessary pressure on it in order to release victims of enforced disappearances.
3. We urge countries to accede to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, thereby strengthening international mechanisms to combat enforced disappearances in individual countries.
Click here to see a full list of recommendations and provisions, including a strategy for the release of civilians.
