Oleksandra Matviitchuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, opened the urgent debate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Thursday 26 January regarding legal issues concerning human rights violations linked to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.
This was followed by the unanimous adoption of a resolution calling for the establishment of a special international criminal tribunal for the crime of aggression, support for the investigation launched by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and the establishment of an international compensation mechanism for victims of these crimes, including a national register of damages.
These are all mechanisms in which the Council of Europe should play a leading role.
The resolution calls on the heads of State and government to take up the issue at their fourth summit in May in Reykjavik, where the issue of Ukraine is expected to be a priority, Marija Pejčinović Burić, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, has already announced.
“Justice must be independent from the magnitude of Putin’s regime’s power”, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk, whose association is also a Sakharov Prize winner.
At the moment, she said, “the law does not work”, as evidenced by the impunity Russian troops have enjoyed for decades in Chechnya, Georgia, Mali, Libya and other countries.
The parliamentary assembly was in agreement with this human rights defender who has been documenting war crimes since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
The establishment of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression has already received the support of several national parliaments and governments, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the OSCE and NATO.
Link to the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/53j (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)