This week, Global Rights Compliance, together with the European Union Advisory Mission and Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG), has conducted training on investigating and prosecuting international crimes committed in places of detention for prosecutors and investigators of the Poltava and Cherkasy regions.
The aim of this comprehensive training programme is to strengthen the knowledge of regional prosecutors and investigators from central Ukraine on investigating and prosecuting international crimes committed in places of detention. The programme is delivered within the framework of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group cluster.
Anastasiia Moiseieva and Olha Kotlyarska, Deputy Leads of GRC’s Mobile Justice Teams, delivered a presentation on the typology of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in detention centres. They outlined the conditions under which detention itself may constitute a violation, the types of evidence used to substantiate such crimes, and ensure accountability, and the approaches taken by international courts and tribunals in prosecuting these offences.
Anastasiia Moiseieva: “To build cases against senior leadership responsible for establishing and implementing policies that result in the mistreatment of Ukrainian POWs, it is essential to adopt a comprehensive approach that enables prosecutors and investigators to situate isolated incidents within broader patterns of criminal conduct.”
Veronika Plotnikova, Head of the Victim and Witness Coordination Centre at the OPG, and Anna Sosonska, Deputy Head of the Second Division of the Department for Countering Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict of the OPG, delivered a presentation on engaging with witnesses and victims, with a particular focus on the need to adopt victim-centred approaches.
According to Veronika Plotnikova, “a trauma-informed approach means seeing before you not just a prisoner of war, but a person with experiences of war and trauma, a person with needs and problems that sometimes go beyond the scope of the criminal justice system, yet are closely linked to it. Working with victim support specialists (coordinators) helps to ensure that these issues are not overlooked. When investigators and prosecutors learn to work with respect for human dignity, it changes not only the quality of the interrogation but also trust in the justice system.”
GRC’s MJTs are part of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, a multilateral initiative established by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to support Ukrainian law enforcement and prosecutors in investigating and prosecuting international crimes committed in the context of the full-scale armed conflict.