Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, radically escalating an armed conflict that began in 2014. This has led to a wide range of human rights violations affecting civilians and combatants.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified numerous allegations of arbitrary deprivation of life, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment, and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV).
By the end of 2023, the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine (MoI) had reported that 28,000 persons had been registered in the Unified Register of Missing Persons. This number will continue to rise. In clear violation of international humanitarian law, many persons have been subjected to abductions, forced deportation, or incommunicado detention, and many have been killed, as evidenced by the discovery of mass and illicit graves.
Since April 2022, mass graves have been found in areas liberated from Russian occupation, and more graves containing unidentified victims are likely to be uncovered in the future. In addition to military personnel reported missing in action, and civilian victims of deportation, summary execution, incommunicado detention, and abduction, children have been subjected to unlawful adoption, as well as family separation in the midst of mass displacement. Missing and disappeared persons from the on-going war and related circumstances include both Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians.
In April 2022, the authorities in Ukraine requested urgent ICMP assistance based on an exchange of diplomatic notes and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in Kyiv in 2021. ICMP responded immediately with deployments to help Ukrainian institutions access high-volume, DNA-led identification capabilities; and to help the authorities ensure that evidence is collected, including evidence from mass and clandestine graves, that would be admissible in criminal trials. ICMP has also supported laboratory operations, data collection, and mass grave investigations; and has started a process of engagement with civil society and families of the missing to ensure their effective participation in the missing person’s process.
ICMP’s Ukraine Program supports the efforts of the authorities to account for all those who are missing, through effective and credible investigations. It supports further development and strengthening of Ukraine’s technical capacity to a level in which evidence can be provided in an international court, starting with the professional recovery of mortal remains, documentation of the crime scene, determining the cause and manner of death, and facilitating a DNA- led process of identification that includes large-scale genetic kinship matching between the family of the missing and the missing person, and concluding with irrefutable evidence of the identity of the missing that can be linked to the crime scene in tens of thousands of cases.
The program also supports the meaningful participation of Ukraine’s civil society and family associations, especially those which are women-led, in the missing persons process; intergovernmental and in-country cooperation and coordination of efforts among state institutions, civil society, international organizations, and the diplomatic community; raising public awareness in Ukraine and among policymakers globally regarding the issue of missing persons; and supporting the strengthening of Ukraine’s institutional capacity and legislative framework to account effectively for missing persons and secure the rights of all families of the missing, regardless of circumstances of disappearance, nationality, or any other factor, to truth, justice and reparations.
