5. Documenting Human Rights Violations and International Crimes
One of the NHC's main aims is to document and collect evidence of human rights violations and core international crimes. We submit cases for targeted sanctions or criminal investigations and to enable future truth and reconciliation processes.
The Documentation and Accountability Hub (DAH) made significant achievements in 2024. Five human rights violators were put on sanction lists, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a preliminary examination into Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s intenational crimes based on a state referral from Lithuania. The NHC was part of early submissions and campaigns to trigger ICC engagement.
The NHC’s local partners and analysts improved their documentation skills, and thousands of materials on human rights violations and war crimes were entered into our I-DOC databases developed by the Centre for International Law Research and Policy Department Case Matrix Network (CILRAP-CMN). Our material, analyses, and network benefited a range of international institutions and procedures, and we reached out to a broad audience with the output of our work.
Local partners and independent analysts in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and elsewhere receive extensive training and tutoring from DAH and add thousands of new entries into the respective databases each year. Interviews, photos, legal documents and other pieces of evidence are entered, processed and analysed in the respective databases, verified and then used for case building, advocacy, or submissions to international institutions or states.
Registrations in 2024:
| Chechnya: | Ukraine: |
|---|---|
| 3949 documents | 4059 documents |
| 1520 victims | 4876 victims |
| 101 protected objects | 2150 protected objects |
| 31 incidents | 1407 incidents |
Five perpetrators of egregious human rights violations in Belarus and in the North Caucasus have been added to sanction lists in the European Union and in Canada after submissions by us. They can no longer travel and access their assets as they please. We have submitted 17 other briefs to states with relevant sanction legislation and expect to have more names added to sanction lists soon. In response to our sanction brief to Canada, four persons were sanctioned for their persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya.
Fighting impunity and achieving justice takes time and dedication. Still, in the meantime, the systematisation of the evidence is crucial to preserve the testimonies of the victims for the future. Similarly, we ensure that relevant institutions use the content of the database. We have contributed valuable material, analysis and contacts to the mission of experts for the 2024 Moscow Mechanism Report of the OSCE for Ukraine, as well as to UN fact-finding experts and Special Rapporteurs such as a detailed report on the practice of hostage-taking in Chechnya, Ukraine and Belarus.
In April, we visited our partners who do fieldwork in Ukraine and met with various stakeholders in Kyiv. The civil society representatives and the prosecutor general’s office staff appreciate the NHC's long-term dedication to helping Ukrainians achieve justice and the impressive qualities of the documentation stored in the I-DOC database.
We also covered documentation of war crimes at several public events in Norway, at the culmination of one year of Scale-Up mentorship at the Paris Peace Forum, and the Assembly of State Parties of the ICC in the Hague in December. Our work is receiving positive attention, and by the end of the year, we entered into cooperation with the IT company Itera Norway, with a significant number of IT experts employed in Ukraine, to further develop the functionalities of I-DOC.