Victims Of War Crimes Research Articles

RECORDING AND REPRESENTATION OF WAR CRIMES OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY ON THE TERRITORY OF UKRAINE: EXPERIENCE OF UKRAINIAN JOURNALISTS

The article emphasizes that journalists play an important role in the process of recording war crimes and in the further processing of the collected material for representation in specific genre formats available for perception by the audience. The coverage of war crimes by the Russian military, on the one hand, problematizes the bloody Russian-Ukrainian war, reflecting the tragic experience that Ukrainian society is currently living, and at the same time – it records the evidence base regarding Russia’s disregard of international conventions, in particular the general rules and customs of warfare, as well as in the context protection of the civilian population during the war, treatment of prisoners of war, etc. This problem needs to be fixed, understood, evaluated, updated and explained both for the Ukrainian audience and the world community, which explains the professional interest of Ukrainian and foreign journalists, the rapid increase in the number of publications on this topic. It is emphasized that journalists must have special training, that is, a basic understanding of International Humanitarian Law, international conventions, as well as be able to navigate freely in the recommendations for covering the stories of victims and victims of war crimes.

Features of the organization of interaction between the international criminal court and law enforcement structures of Ukraine regarding the investigation of crimes

The article examines the statistics of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights, and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group regarding the investigation of international war crimes. A sociological survey of NPU employees, the prosecutor's office, lawyers, and victims of war crimes was analyzed, and problematic issues that hinder the effective investigation of international crimes were outlined based on the results. It was found that the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in relation to the investigation of the most serious international crimes is divided into: subject, territorial, universal, temporal and substantive. The subject jurisdiction of the ICC extends to crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The national system of investigating crimes has been studied since 2014. It is theoretically justified that the key task at the moment is to document the consequences of an armed invasion - in an intensified mode, with the aim of providing both national and international judicial institutions with sufficient evidence, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the SBU, the NPU, the National Guard of Ukraine, other law enforcement structures. The problem of ensuring security during the collection of information by law enforcement officers, as well as other persons involved in the process of transferring information, evidence, testimony, etc., is outlined, because all these processes, as a rule, take place in the combat zone or in the adjacent territories. It was concluded that in order to improve the effectiveness of the investigation of international crimes in Ukraine, it is necessary to implement as soon as possible: a clear policy regarding the national system of prosecution for international crimes; effective coordination of both national and international bodies of pretrial investigation; quick exchange of information; a generalized electronic database of documentation with access to both prosecutors and investigators.

Reflections for the interdisciplinary study of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022

The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is an unusual geopolitical event that puts the security of Western Europe at risk and, at the same time, erodes the norms of international law that regulate, at least in theory, relations between civilized countries. Indeed, it is a tragic event that has cost the lives of thousands of civilians who have been victims of war crimes and serious violations of their fundamental rights. In this sense, the objective of this editorial is twofold, on the one hand, to present volume 40, number 73 of Political Questions and, on the other, to briefly explain the causes and geopolitical consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is concluded that the invasion of Putin’s Russia in Ukraine can trigger a prolonged and extensive conflict that can even confront NATO directly with Russia. Ideologically, it is a conflict that means a clash between different political models such as the liberal democracies of the West (ensuring human rights, adherence to the principles of international law - the sovereignty of the country, freedom of speech, free movement around the world, etc.) with the militarist and neoconservative authoritarianism of tsarist roots.

About Issue 2 of 2022

This issue was undoubtedly the most challenging in my life due to events that I would never have believed could happen in my lifetime or afterward. The heredity of WW2 seemed to me so remarkable and obvious, contemporary human rights values looked so strong and indisputable, that any such open and destructive violations of these rights could hardly be imagined by even the most sceptical people in Europe. Despite many reasonable grounds for this scepticism appearing since 2014, I preferred to believe that these were only politicians’ games and that nobody could ever cross this Rubicon. Yet, during these last months, the whole world has been faced with unprecedented acts against the independent and democratic state in Europe, the ancient nation, and the whole idea of the rule of law. The war in Ukraine has become an event of worldwide relevance: the effects of this war will be borne by future generations of Europeans who are suffering now because of it. Millions of Ukrainians moved to the EU member states and abroad, leaving their homes and property. Many individuals have become victims of war crimes. All this should be the basis for rethinking access to justice as a concept, as well as our system of preventing such a conflict in the future. Even though this war is not the first war in Europe, we must learn lessons from the current events and take the next steps to uphold the rule of law and human rights protection, as was done after WW2. The necessity of an effective conflict resolution system is clear if we are to prevent overcrowded courts and resolve the uncertainties in European society at large.

État amoureux normal et pathologique

This reflection is an overview of the works of writers, poets, philosophers and doctors. We evoke the psychology of love disorder, love diseases, disorders in which the theme of love is central: morbid jealousy, erotomania, normal and pathological love passion or delusional blindness. We pay tribute to illustrious authors: Maurice Dide, Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and Gaétan de Clérambault. In this field, the use of new terms is booming, but does not always come with a deeper psychological understanding of the mechanisms depicted. Love that is not pathological does exist and, under certain conditions, it can last. There are also various phenomena of paradoxical attachment. Hostage-taking and the Stockholm syndrome should not make us forget much more frequent traumatic situations, such as mistreated and abused children, battered spouses or victims of war crimes. Such acts are regularly underpinned by relationships of domination and control over others, for which access to a therapeutic approach is almost non-existent. The semiology of passionate love seems to coincide, on several points, with that of fanatical passion: the exclusivity of the object, the blind certainties, the submission of the object, overestimation, idealization that distorts judgment, and the absence of criticism. The fanatic, as the lover can sometimes become, is a remorseless criminal. The lover is passionate about the ideal, like the passionate idealists described by Dide. This connection informs us about the relationship between the loving self and its object. In passionate love, Freud observes that the self empties itself in favor of the object, which becomes more and more grandiose. The lover gives the impression that his or her self disappears and fades under the shadow of the ideal. But there is nothing altruistic about this self-sacrifice: the self remains faithful to its self-love. This abandonment of the self to the object is a narcissistic strategy of the self that is nourished and restored through the investment of the object. If we consider the psychological signs and disorders that characterize the psychic mechanisms of love, we find that these phenomena have points in common with psychiatric pathologies, especially in the intellectual, physical and affective spheres. The obsession, the impulse, the narrowing of the field of consciousness of a lover explains the fact that he becomes unable, despite his awareness of the danger, to renounce his passion, sacrificing instead his fortune, his situation, and even his life, to a love that he knows is sometimes harmful, even dead-end. For Pierre Janet, passion itself resembles madness, both in its origin and in its development and psychodynamic mechanism. Love-hate is a great purveyor of criminal conduct, such as violence, robbery, rape, crimes of passion, suicides and double suicides. According to some authors, the crime of love is only a crime of self-love that reveals an assertion of control over an object. Many scientific works have introduced a distinction between passion without delirium and delirium with passion, including erotomania, where passion becomes central to psychic activity. Its outcome can be fatal, taking the form of homicide, suicide out of desperation or spite. It can also result in moral suicide by sacrificing the future and then lead to social death. Jealousy-passion and jealousy-delusion, closely linked to feelings of love, have been the subject of writings both in literature and in psychiatric works, and their nosographic descriptions by many authors reflect the difficulty of drawing a tight partition between them.

Internment or Assigned Residence of Palestinian Protected Persons without Trial or Charge: Victims of War Crimes

Abstract This article examines internment or assigned residence of protected persons without trial or charge under the laws and customs of war. It then explores Israel’s (as the Occupying Power) resort to such measures and the role of its judiciary. It further considers the grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (war crime) of deportation of scores of Palestinian persons to prisons and detention centres outside the frontiers of their occupied territory. Simultaneously, it considers how the violations of the rules and procedures on internment or assigned residence have amounted to four grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention (war crimes). These are: inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful confinement and wilfully depriving a protected person of the right to fair and lawful trial.

Torture, Literature, and History in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Leather Funnel”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Leather Funnel” is a brief, rather ghastly tale that centers on a dream vision of a woman being brutally tortured. Doyle’s other major publication of 1902, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct , was his defense of the British army against claims made by W. T. Stead in Methods of Barbarism (1901) that Boer women and children had been the victims of war crimes and systematic torture. Doyle structures the story so that the narrator’s naive response of moral outrage at seeing a woman being tortured gradually develops into a more sophisticated understanding of justice as his vision is placed in its proper legal and historical context. Taken together, “The Leather Funnel” and The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct offer useful insights into Doyle’s understanding of the relationship between literature and history, and the deployment of state power through written language.

Why Children have Rights: Children Rights in Janusz Korczak’s Education Philosophy

Children are a weak part of society. They suffer injustice, their voice is unheard, their property is not theirs and they depend on adults in all aspects of their life. Even today, children are victims of war crimes, street violence, sexual abuse, hard labour, lack of proper education and insufficient life conditions. Their rights remain an unfulfilled promise.We claim that children have rights, but what does it mean? Of course, we love our children, the challenge is not to define what we gracefully give but what children’s rights are, regardless of our own feelings? How can we substantiate the claim that children have rights? The legacy of Janusz Korczak, world-known children’s rights advocate (1878–1942), may help us in this task.Korczak’s education legacy portrays a cluster of inspiring ideas: children are not people-in-the-making, but human beings here-and-now, they deserve our respect and respect implies ultimate rights. Korczak was not only a theoretician, but also an educationalist in practice who structured his children’s houses as democratic communities, directed by a children’s parliament, court, newspaper and other community common spaces of discussion and learning.A major question remains: how we connect Korczak’s fragmented and isolated educational ideas and practices, each one inspiring and powerful on its own, into one integrated worldview? Can we connect all the dots into a meaningful picture that substantiates the claim that children have unconditional rights as human beings and not only as an arbitrary gesture of the adults? This study suggests that all of Korczak’s ideas and practices fit into the context of Greek philosophy and Korczak appears as a modern Stoic.His Stoicism gives ground to the idea of children’s dignity and children’s rights as an immediate outcome of this dignity. In the infinity of the cosmos, there is no hierarchy of being. In this context, children have rights like any other human being.

Approaching Custom Identification as a Conflict Avoidance Technique:TadićandKupreškićRevisited

AbstractInternational human rights law (IHRL), international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL) have trouble staying faithful to the two pillars of customary international law – state practice andopinio juris. In ICL, theTadićInterlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction and theKupreškićTrial Judgement have even gone as far as enunciating new models to identify customs. In this article, I show that the approaches to customs’ identification postulated in these two cases were conflict-avoidance techniques used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to bring together IHRL and IHL. The crux of the matter in theTadićandKupreškićcases was that the human rights of the victims of war crimes committed in internal conflicts required that a new approach to customary international law be adopted. Thus, the criminal aspect of IHL (i.e., ICL) was updated, and conceptual conflicts between IHL and IHRL were avoided.

Odgovornost za štetu i naknada štete počinjene ratnim zločinom

Ratni zločini su najteža kaznena djela koja su u svojim obilježjima vezani za kršenje pravila međunarodnog prava tijekom rata, oružanog sukoba i okupacije. Jedna od posljedica počinjenja kaznenih djela ratnih zločina su imovinske i neimovinske štete počinjene u pravilu većem broju osoba. Stoga je odgovornost za naknadu štete i naknada štete žrtvama kaznenih djela ratnih zločina jednako važna kao i kazneni progon samih počinitelja. Na području Republike Hrvatske i susjedne Bosne i Hercegovine u bližoj povijesti vodio se rat i oružani sukobi te je dolazilo do počinjenja kaznenih djela ratnih zločina, a sve do danas se vode kazneni postupci i postupci radi naknade štete protiv počinitelja i odgovornih osoba. Kod odgovornosti za naknadu štete počinjene ratnim zločinima često će se uz štetnika kao odgovorna osoba pojaviti i država, a slijedom toga će se postaviti pitanje zastare potraživanja naknade štete prema državi. Također je bitno razlikovanje ratne štete i terorističkog akta od eventualnog kaznenog djela ratnog zločina, a kod naknade štete žrtvama kaznenih djela ratnih zločina potrebno je provesti brz i učinkoviti postupak obeštećenja. Predmet je ovog rada analiza pravne regulative i sudske prakse u svezi s odgovornosti za štetu i naknadu štete počinjene ratnim zločinom. U radu se prvotno iznosi pojam i razlike ratnog zločina, ratne štete i terorističkog akta, a zatim se obrađuje odgovornost za štetu počinjenu ratnim zločinima i naknada štete

The contribution of prosecutors to the failure of damage claims of victims in war crimes trials at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina

According to definition and laws, the role of the prosecutor is to represent public goods. In the cases of war crimes, that public good is not exhausted with criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of the criminal offences, but it also covers reparation of the damage to the victims. This is not part of the judiciary praxis of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although there is a clear obligation to collect evidence that would support damage claims of the victims as prescribed in the Criminal Procedure Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CPCBH), in reality prosecutors fail to fulfill this obligation. In few cases, settled before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the court had awarded compensation to the victims of war crimes, merits for that are to be given to the victims who have, on their own initiative and with their own limited resources, hired attorneys and other experts who acted as prosecutors. To prevent this from happening in the future, having in mind hundreds of potential pending cases (with thousands of victims) waiting for trial, this practice needs to be changed. In that way, although mostly only declaratory in nature in criminal codes and during war crimes trials, more “realistic” and “humane” justice could be achieved for those directly affected by these crimes.

Zbrodnia katyńska przed Europejskim Trybunałem Praw Człowieka — refleksje nad wyrokiem z 21 października 2013 roku

The Katyń massacre before the European Court of Human Rights — reflections on the October 21, 2013 judgmentBoth the Nuremberg Tribunal in its judgment of Jan. 1, 1946 as well as the European Court of Human Rights’ Grand Chamber judgment of Oct. 21, 2013 in the case of Janowiec and Others v. Russia abstracted from a substantive decision on Russia’s responsibility for the Katyń massacre and failed to determine the consequences to be borne by the defending state, whose authorities decided upon the performance of the act in question. Contemporary Russian state denies that the murder of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war and inmates at the behest of the highest authorities of the USSR in 1940 was indeed a war crime. According to the position of the Russian government, represented before the ECHR, what took place was solely a crime committed by the administrative personnel who acted beyond their authority, the prosecution of which expired after 10 years, i.e. in 1950. The Russian side also claimed that it was not obliged to conduct an investigation on the matter and refused to disclose the content of the order to discontinue the criminal proceedings issued in 2004 to both the relatives of those who were murdered and to the ECHR. It also refused to recognize the murdered Polish prisoners of war as victims of political repression, claiming that it is unclear according to which criminal code they were sentenced to be shot. Russia’s position in denying the temporal jurisdiction of the ECHR and the ratione materiae with regard to the Katyń massacre which was in fact accepted by the ECHR in its judgment, should be subject to criticism. According to the statement of the court, Russia has not violated Article 2 of the Convention in its procedural aspect or Article 3 in its way of dealing with the relatives of the victims. The Court has lost the chance to contribute to appointing — in terms of human rights — a protection standard for a vital legal interest, which is currently the collective memory of the persecution of people because of their national, racial or religious background, ones who had become victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in the name of Nazi or communist ideology once pursued in Europe.

The legitimacy of international courts: Victims’ evaluations of the ICTY and local courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This paper presents the results of a 2007 survey of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity from Bosnia and Herzegovina. We study the level of diffuse and specific support for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) among its constituency by exploring the respondents’ views about the ICTY and the local courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Our results show that, whereas the ICTY was the preferred decision-maker for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the majority of the respondents, ethnicity plays a strong role in the perceptions of the ICTY’s legitimacy. Compared with Croat and Serb respondents, who typically expressed little confidence in the ICTY, the Bosniak/Muslim respondents seemed to show the greatest degree of support for the ICTY. Although the majority of the respondents evaluated the ICTY as fair, the level of support for the ICTY was sharply divided across ethnic lines as well and was related to evaluations of the ICTY’s distributive fairness and procedural fairness, and to perceptions about the judges’ (lack of) political independence. The majority of the respondents evaluated only one domestic court – the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina – as fair.

Russian–Georgian war crimes and its outcomes

IntroductionGeorgia is the Country located in Caucasian Region with two occupied territories: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since 1993 as a result of military actions 500,000 civilians became victims of ethnic cleansing. In October 13, 2015 the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requests judges for authorization to open an investigation into the Situation in Georgia that clearly shows importance of the problem addressed by this study.Objectives of the study includesObservation of outcomes of traumatic stress among three categories of victims: IDPs, population living in the military conflict zone and civilians living in the so called “Buffer Zone”. Aim of the study was to provide comparative analysis between trauma affected different groups.MethodsThe clinical and paraclinical methods using the semi–structured clinical interview, psychological test battery and paraclinical diagnostic tests were used, analysis were provided by using the SPSS.ResultsBased on observation in 2014–2015 n = 150 victims of war crimes were observed. Also additional stressors for all target groups were identified. Differences and similarities of psychological and somatic after effects of trauma revealed.ConclusionsWe can conclude that prolonged stress situation with unsecured environment and daily life under unexpected circumstances caused prolongation of PTSD alongside of behavioral changes and with damages in social adaptation. On the other hand completed trauma with leaving of native living areas and significant changes in social life in most of cases caused emotional disturbances with prolonged chronic depression and persistent fillings of grief.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.

Pursuit of justice and the victims of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina: An exploratory study

This paper presents the results of a 2007 survey of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our results show that the ICTY is the primary decision-maker for war crimes and crimes against humanity of their choice, particularly for the trials of military and political leaders. The respondents who reported being raped, beaten, and starved were more supportive of the ICTY than the other respondents were. The respondents who evaluated the ICTY as fair and who testified at the Court of BiH were more likely to select the ICTY as the preferred decision-maker. The respondents evaluated only one domestic court—the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Court of BiH)—as fair.

Legitimacy of International Courts in the Aftermath of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Victims' Evaluations of the ICTY and Local Courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This paper presents the results of a 2007 survey of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity from Bosnia and Herzegovina. We study the level of diffuse and specific support for the ICTY among its constituency by exploring the respondents' views about the ICTY and the local courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Our results show that, whereas the ICTY was the preferred decision-maker for war crimes and crimes against humanity of their choice for the majority of the respondents, ethnicity plays a strong role in the perceptions of the ICTY's legitimacy. Compared to Croat and Serb respondents who typically expressed little confidence in the ICTY, the Bosniak/Muslim respondents seemed to show the greatest degree of support for the ICTY, both diffuse and specific. Although the majority of the respondents evaluated the ICTY as fair, the level of support for the ICTY was sharply divided across ethnic lines as well. The respondents' support for the ICTY was related to the evaluations of the ICTY's distributive fairness, procedural fairness, and the perceptions about the judges' (lack of) political independence. The majority of the respondents evaluated only one domestic court - the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina - as fair.

Transitional Justice Processes and Reconciliation in the Former Yugoslavia: Challenges and Prospects

This article aims to assess the achievements and challenges facing the transitional justice processes that have taken place in the countries most affected by the armed conflicts resulting in the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and whether, and to what extent, these processes have furthered inter-ethnic reconciliation. The two variables used for this purpose are the scope of individual criminal accountability for war crimes and the scope of reparations provided to victims of the armed conflicts occurring throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s. The following analysis combines an assessment of relevant international and domestic efforts. Thus, first, the article analyses the impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY or tribunal) in the transitional justice processes in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia or BiH), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Macedonia), Serbia, and Kosovo. Over the last 20 years the tribunal has investigated and prosecuted a considerable number of individuals for mass atrocity crimes. Subsequently, the focus shifts to assessing the domestic efforts surrounding the prosecution of war crimes and awarding of reparations for victims of the armed conflicts in these countries. The article argues that lack of sufficient coordination and close cooperation between international stakeholders and a general reticence on the part of the national authorities to engage meaningfully with past wrongs have resulted in a situation where many perpetrators of war crimes remain unpunished and individual victims have barely received any reparations. The article holds that for the ongoing transitional justice processes to meaningfully further inter-ethnic reconciliation in the republics emerging from the former Yugoslavia, continued legal reforms and a pluralistic public discourse, which embrace a strong focus on the rights of victims of war crimes, are necessary.

Human Trafficking and Its Prosecution: Challenges of the ICC

Human Trafficking and Its Prosecution: Challenges of the ICC

Earthquakes and Wars: The Logic of International Reparations

International law requires states to compensate victims of war crimes, but not of incidental damage that is lawful under the laws of war. Recently, scholars and advocacy groups have called to expand the duty to repair so as to cover all wartime harm. We inquire into the possible justifications for expanding this duty and test them against a hypothetical expansion of the duty to compensate victims of natural disasters. The effort is ultimately to inquire whether there is something unique about war – as distinct from all other disasters – which demands special consideration.

Overcoming Past Wrongs Committed by States

This article investigates whether or not reconciliation for historical wrongs can be realized in the absence of a state apology. States have traditionally been notoriously reluctant to apologize for their past crimes, and this has often meant that victims are unable to attain closure while they are still alive. What, then, are the alternatives? This article examines the case of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery, which was held in 2000. The Tribunal was organized primarily by non-governmental organizations: its judgements were neither legally binding, nor was the Tribunal capable of issuing a ‘sincere’ apology that was the equivalent of a state apology. Nevertheless, this article makes the case that faced with the fact that the Japanese state has not always been forthcoming in acknowledging and taking legal responsibility for its past wrongs, such private, non-state attempts may constitute the best chance for us to accord some victims of war crimes some sense of closure for their past suffering.