Over 1000 persons disappeared during the conflict in Ukraine

Details

30.08.2017

 On the 30th of August, UN marks an International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. An increase in the number of disappeared persons is unavoidable during military conflicts. Every state has procedures for searching for disappeared persons during peaceful time, which are usually ineffective in extreme situations, such as a military conflict.

 According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, over one thousand people disappeared during the conflict in Ukraine. Documentation of disappearances was ceased in 2014 during escalation and was renewed afterwards in separate efforts for government-controlled areas and on the territory controlled by illegal armed groups. The lack of coordination between different state authorities led to different estimates as to the number of disappeared persons in the conflict area - from 488 to 1376.

In June 2015, Ukraine acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. This means that Ukraine has an obligation to take into account the Convention and other international instruments ratified by Ukraine in relation to enforced disappearances.

Ukrainian human rights CSOs say that current criminal law in Ukraine does not reflect in full the legal nature of enforced disappearances. For higher accuracy of data on the number of disappeared persons Ukrainian legislation needs to be improved by adopting a specialized law to regulate coordination of search efforts between the state and non-state parties.

On 22 November 2016, parliament members introduced a draft law “On the legal status of disappeared persons” (registered in Verkhovna Rada under No.5435, which needs to be further elaborated to include critical provisions on the prevention of enforced disappearances which pose a significant risk in areas affected by hostilities and provide for assistance to relatives of the disappeared person if the victim was the breadwinner, as such relatives, especially children, constitute a socially vulnerable group and require additional social protection.

Special attention is also drawn by the human rights defenders to the disappearances of military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to NGO “Mirny Bereg”, by early March 2017, 425 military service people were considered missing.

UNDP-supported civil society partners from the “Justice for Peace in Donbas” Coalition of human rights CSOs made recommendations for better coordination of state and non-state parties in their efforts to locate a disappeared person and ensure social protection and support to the relatives of disappeared persons, as well as developing and adopting a law mandating creation of a DNA database for all military service persons.

The Coalition "Justice for Peace in Donbas" is an informal union of 17 human rights organizations and initiatives established in 2014. Members of the Coalition have combined efforts to conduct coordinated documenting of human rights violations, committed during the armed confrontation in eastern Ukraine.

In November 2017, Ukraine will present its national report to the UN Human Rights Council under the 3rd cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism. Taking into consideration that the second cycle of the UPR was held in 2012, it did not cover human rights challenges related to the conflict. Therefore, the Coalition "Justice for Peace in Donbas" prepared the stakeholders’ submission on the human rights violations that resulted from the armed conflict in Donbas. This information is prepared based on information from their report.