A group of experienced experts provided civic activists with the training needed to safely capture video evidence of human rights violations.

 

Olena Suslova, Head of the Information and Consultation Women's Center, elaborated on working with people who have witnessed gender-based violence. Activists also learnt about its difference from other crimes.

 

Facts of the recruitment and use of children by armed groups were investigated by Oleksii Lazarenko, Vice-President of the All-Ukrainian Foundation for the Protection of Children's Rights. The human rights defender provided the participants with the main principles of communication with young witnesses of such violations.

 

These discussions were followed by the presentations of Natalia Pylypiv, Volodymyr Scherbau, and Olesia Ohryzko, staff of the UN Human Right Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. Participants found out how the Mission works in terms of documenting human rights violations.

 

"During the strategic planning session, the Coalition members agreed to focus more on documenting gender-based human rights violations and cases of military use of children. Collecting evidence of such violations is extremely difficult, that's why it is important that human rights defenders are equipped with the necessary knowledge. International organisations also need this information, that's why we conduct the training on these issues," said Volodymyr Shcherbachenko, coordinator of the Justice for Peace in Donbas Coalition.

 

During the workshop, while practicing to capture gender-based violence on-camera, activists tried to put themselves in a victim's, an interviewer's, and a cameraperson's shoes. In the following discussion, conducted by Victoria Cooper from Witness and Oleksii Bida from UHHRU, participants were able to analyse their own and others' mistakes, in order not to repeat them in the documentation of violations in real life.

 

In addition, human rights activists worked on the preparation and verification of the evidence on certain offenses for examination by the International Criminal Court and learned how to safely conduct interviews with victims – both for a witness and an interviewer.

 

The workshop was conducted under the Democratisation, Human Rights and Civil Society Development Programme in Ukraine, implemented by UNDP and funded by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.