Responsibility for war crimes: through transitional justice to sustainable

Abstract

ВіДпоВіДальність за Воєнні злочини: через перехіДне праВосУДДя До сталого мирУ та безпеКи УКраїни Responsibility for war crimes: through transitional justice to sustainable Based on the experience of the countries that managed to settle armed conflicts and protected the sovereignty and territorial integrity, recommendations of leading international and European experts and scholars in the field of transitional justice, the corresponding concept has been formed, the components of transitional justice are characterized with an emphasis on such a component as prosecution. Taking into account the results of the analysis of the regulatory framework and the practice of bringing to responsibility for committing international crimes committed during the period of temporary occupation of the territory of Ukraine, which took place no later than on February 20, 2014, an assessment of the prospects for prosecution for war crimes in Ukraine was made. The directions have been developed to improve the efficiency of the law enforcement and law-making agency of Ukraine in this direction, to consolidate their efforts with civil society, the international community, international and European institutions, whose competence covers issues of criminal prosecution for international crimes. It was proposed to solve the problems with the help of 1) development and approval of the concept of transitional justice, which would cover both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, with differing levels of international involvement (or none at all) and issues of individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals, or a combination there of; 2) ratification of the Rome Statute 3) improvement of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in terms of regulations of the responsibility for war crimes and consolidation such categories of crimes as crimes against humanity; 4) advanced training of law enforcement officials and judges, whose competence covers the collection, assessment, and decision-making concerning the acts on the occupied territories that have signs of international crimes; 5) an information company on the indicia of war crimes, responsibility for their commission, the procedure for persons to act in case they witness an international crime, take part to measures to collect and fix evidence for their transfer to the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine or the International Criminal Court.

Scientific Approaches in Jurisprudence

“…Sierra Leone 17 , Rwanda18 , Sudan19 and other countries of the African continent20 , which have had or are having active armed conflicts; Croatia21 22 , Bosnia and Herzegovina 23 Colombia 24 , Syria 25 -this is by no means an exhaustive list of those states that have faced the problems of conflict and post-conflict societies. It means that despite the efforts of the international community, establishment of a large number of humanitarian organizations, adoption of international norms in this area, armed conflicts cannot be avoided.However, the analysis of the course and consequences of conflicts allow us to identify and form already tested in practice concepts about resumption of sovereignty, territorial integrity, national security, transition from conflict to post-conflict societies26 . The issue of the functioning of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary of countries where long-term and stable peace has been restored, or the armed conflict has entered a phase of cessation of active armed confrontation or end of active hostilities, should be given special attention27 .…”