Oksana Pokalchuk | |
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| Occupation | Human rights defender  |
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Oksana Pokalchuk is a Ukrainian lawyer and human rights activist who headed the Ukrainian section of Amnesty International from 2017 [1] [2] to 2022. [3]
Oksana Pokalchuk | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Human rights defender |
| Employer |
|
Oksana Pokalchuk is a Ukrainian lawyer and human rights activist who headed the Ukrainian section of Amnesty International from 2017 [1] [2] to 2022. [3]
Pokalchuk graduated with a Master's Arts degree in law at Academy of Advocacy of Ukraine in 2009. She later started a PhD studying gender identity law at the Kyiv University of Law. [4]
In 2008, Pokalchuk started LGBT and other human rights work as a lawyer at the NGO Insight. Around 2015, she was an assistant lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights. [4] [5]
Pokalchuk was the executive director of the Ukrainian section of Amnesty International starting in 2017. [1] [2] Following the 4 August 2022 publication by Amnesty International of a report on Ukrainian military usage of civilian areas, [6] Pokalchuk stated that she would resign in protest. She stated, "I believe any work for the good of society should be done taking into account the local context and thinking through consequences. Most importantly, I am convinced that our surveys should be made thoroughly and with people in mind, whose lives often depend directly on the words and actions of international organizations." [3] Pokalchuk did resign, as did several of her colleagues. Pokalchuk explained her reasons in The Washington Post on 13 August, stating her view that "the report's deepest flaw was how it contradicted its main objective: [f]ar from protecting civilians, it further endangered them by giving Russia a justification to continue its indiscriminate attacks." She described doubts about the report's validity in terms of international humanitarian law. In her judgment, Amnesty International Crisis Team researchers at the time had "exceptional training and experience in human rights, laws of war, weapons analysis" but "often lack[ed] [a] knowledge of local languages and context." [7]
In 2017, Pokalchuk stated Amnesty International's view of Ukrainian decommunization laws as violating human rights, arguing that people should only have speech restricted for promoting violence, and not for "using symbols if the use of such symbols does not have the purpose of inciting violence or aggression". [2]
In 2019, Pokalchuk stated that Russian authorities would not be able to prevent the International Criminal Court preliminary examination of possible war crimes that occurred in Ukraine starting with the Revolution of Dignity in late 2013 and early 2014 from proceeding through into a full investigation. She stated that Russian commanders at the highest military levels would be subject to prosecution if evidence of them giving orders to commit war crimes were found. [8]
In 2020, Pokalchuk stated that Amnesty International had documented gender-based and domestic violence in eastern parts of Ukraine added to the stress of the war in Donbas. Eight cases of sexual violence against civilian girls and women by Ukrainian military forces were documented during 2017–2018. Pokalchuk said that women in the region "[didn't] feel safe – neither in public nor at home" and called for "swift and comprehensive legal reforms", based on consultations with survivors and women's groups, in order to protect the survivors of the violence. [5] Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Pokalchuk predicted that the existing patriarchy in Ukraine would lead to worsening of sexual and domestic violence against women. [9]
Pokalchuk described the September 2021 arrest of Nariman Dzhelyal, deputy head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, to be based on a fabricated case, stating that the prosecution was to prevent independent civil society from functioning in Crimea. [10]
Human rights in Uganda have trended for the past decades towards increasing harassment of the opposition, cracking down on NGOs which work on election and term limits, corruption, land rights, environmental issues, womens, children and gay rights. In 2012, the Relief Web sponsored Humanitarian Profile – 2012 said Uganda made considerable developments Since at least 2013 the Freedom in the World report by Freedom House has identified Uganda as a country considered to be "Not Free".There are several areas of concern when it comes to human rights in Uganda, and the "Not Free" classification is due to both low political rights and civil liberties rankings.
The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People is the single highest executive-representative body of the Crimean Tatars in period between sessions of the Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar People. The Mejlis is a member institution of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.
Human rights in Ukraine concern the fundamental rights of every person in Ukraine. Between 2017 and 2022, Freedom House has given Ukraine ratings from 60 to 62 on its 100-point scale, and a "partly free" overall rating. Ratings on electoral processes have generally been good, but there are problems with corruption and due process. Its rating later declined in 2023 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine which led to the enactment of martial law in Ukraine as well as a labor code that removed many legal protection for employees and small and medium-sized companies as well as a law that that increased the government's power to regulate media companies and journalism. Since the beginning of the invasion Russia has engaged in various war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and the invasion has had a major humanitarian impact on Ukraine and it's citizens.
Ukraine is a multi-ethnic country that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Valeriy Govgalenko argues that racism and ethnic discrimination has arguably been a largely fringe issue in the past, but has had a climb in social influence due to ultra-nationalist parties gaining attention in recent years. There have been recorded incidents of violence where the victim's race is widely thought to have played a role, these incidents receive extensive media coverage and are usually condemned by all mainstream political forces. Human Rights Watch reported that "racism and xenophobia remain entrenched problems in Ukraine". In 2012 the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) reported that "tolerance towards Jews, Russians and Romani appears to have significantly declined in Ukraine since 2000 and prejudices are also reflected in daily life against other groups, who experience problems in accessing goods and services". From 2006 to 2008, 184 attacks and 12 racially motivated murders took place. In 2009, no such murders were recorded, but 40 racial incidents of violence were reported. It is worth considering that, according to Alexander Feldman, president of the Association of National and Cultural Unions of Ukraine, "People attacked on racial grounds do not report the incidents to the police and police often fail to classify such attacks as racially motivated and often write them off as domestic offence or hooliganism".
Human rights in Poland are enumerated in the second chapter of its Constitution, ratified in 1997. Poland is a party to several international agreements relevant to human rights, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Helsinki Accords, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organisation says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organisation is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments." The organisation has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.
There have been persistent concerns over human rights in El Salvador. Some of these date from the civil war of 1980–92. More recent concerns have been raised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They include women's rights, child labor, and unlawful killings and harassment of labor union members and other social activists.
Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy bias against either non-Western countries or Western-supported countries. Various governments criticized by Amnesty International have in turn criticized the organization, complaining about what they assert constituted one-sided reporting.
Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Kolchenko is a Ukrainian left-wing and trade union activist, antifascist, anarchist, ecologist, and archaeologist, who was convicted of terrorism by the Russian administration of Crimea in 2014.
Server Rustemovych Mustafayev is a Crimean Tatar human rights defender and coordinator of the civil rights organization Crimean Solidarity.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed many deliberate attacks against civilian targets, massacres of civilians, torture and rape of women and children, torture and mutilitation of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas.
On 3 March 2022, 47 people were killed in a series of airstrikes in Chernihiv by Russian forces during the siege of the city, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the strikes as a war crime.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine violated international law. The invasion has also been called a crime of aggression under international criminal law, and under some countries' domestic criminal codes – including those of Ukraine and Russia – although procedural obstacles exist to prosecutions under these laws.
On 9 March 2022, the Russian Air Force bombed Maternity Hospital No 3, a hospital complex functioning both as a children's hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring at least sixteen, and leading to at least one stillbirth.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, that began on 24 February 2022, has had a significant impact on women across Ukraine and Russia, both as combatants and as civilians. In Ukraine, the invasion has seen a significant increase in women serving in the military as well as a significant number of women leaving the country as refugees. In Russia, women have led the anti-war movement.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry in Ukraine is a United Nations commission of inquiry established by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 4 March 2022 with a mandate to investigate violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Commission delivered its reports on 18 October 2022 and 16 March 2023.
Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. According to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers ranged from 4 years old to over 80 years old.
Filtration camps, also referred to as concentration camps, are camps used by Russian forces during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine to register, interrogate, and detain Ukrainian citizens in regions under Russian occupation before transferring them into Russia, sometimes as part of forced population transfers. Filtration camp detainees undergo a system of security checks and personal data collection. Detainees are subject to widespread torture, killings, rape, starvation and other grave human rights violations.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities and armed forces have committed war crimes by carrying out deliberate attacks against civilian targets and indiscriminate attacks in densely-populated areas. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says the Russian military exposed the civilian population to unnecessary and disproportionate harm by using cluster bombs and by firing other weapons with wide-area effects into civilian areas, such as missiles, heavy artillery shells and multiple launch rockets. As of 2024, the attacks had resulted in the documented deaths of between 10,000 and 16,500 civilians. On 22 April 2022, the UN reported that 92.3% of civilian deaths were attributable to the Russian armed forces.
The use of cluster munitions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present) has been recorded by a number of eyewitnesses and journalists, as well as representatives of the UN, humanitarian and public organizations. In particular, the head of the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet, reported on March 30 at least 24 cases since the beginning of the invasion. As of July 1, hundreds of attacks by Russian forces with cluster munitions have already been recorded in the settlements of the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson and Chernihiv regions. 215 civilians are known to have been killed in these shellings and 474 injured, many of which may go unreported. Both Russia as well as Ukraine have used cluster munitions during the conflict, however, Russian use has been extensive while Ukrainian use has been more limited.