Human Rights House Foundation statement
HRC63 – Item 4 – Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry – Ukraine
22 September 2026
Background documents
- Open statement: guaranteeing victim and civil society engagement in shaping the International Claims Commission for Ukraine
- Statement by Ukrainian survivor groups regarding the International Compensation Mechanism for victims of Russian aggression and its temporal scope
- Report: Monitoring enforced disappearances in certain temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine (Crimea, parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions)
Check against delivery.
Thank you, Vice-President.
New monitoring by our Ukrainian partners highlights the urgent need for accountability for enforced disappearances in occupied areas of Ukraine.
Research coordinated by Human Rights House Crimea documents a systematic, centrally coordinated practice in Crimea and occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia: civilians are abducted, held incommunicado and tortured; their whereabouts concealed; and their detention sometimes “legalised” through Russia’s criminal justice system.
The wider analysis of one of our partner organisations, Zmina, shows that these violations occur across occupied Ukraine as part of a broader policy of persecution increasingly aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity and preventing future resistance.
Approximately 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been unlawfully detained or remain missing. Our partners identify the Russian Federal Security Service as a key perpetrator and coordinator. Alongside arbitrary detention, torture, killings and denial of fair-trial rights, these acts may amount to the crime against humanity of persecution.
Furthermore, a process of accountability must also deliver remedy. Ukrainian survivor groups and civil society organisations call for meaningful participation in designing the International Claims Commission for Ukraine, and for reparations to recognise victims of Russia’s aggression since 2014.
Vice-President,
We ask the Commission: what is needed to establish institutional and command responsibility for this policy of persecution, while ensuring that evidence supports not only criminal accountability, but also victim and survivor-centred reparations?
Thank you.
