Ukraine: justice in times of war

A Justice Info Event in The Hague on December 6, 2022

Trial in Ukraine - Justice in times of war

Never before has justice for war crimes been so quickly in action while the conflict is raging. In Ukraine, national courts began to try crimes related to the Russian invasion in May, only three months into the war. This wartime justice, spectacular in its speed, delocalized and multifaceted, is forging an unprecedented experience of international justice. It’s also a unique and major challenge for the media.

In the presence of one of the best specialists on Ukrainian national justice, Anna Mykytenko, Senior Adviser and Country Manager at Global Rights Compliance, Irina Salii, Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Sudovyi Reporter, Thierry Cruvellier, Editor-in-Chief at Justice Info, and Janet Anderson, Justice Info's correspondent in The Hague.

Full video

Here is the complete recording (nearly 2 hours) of this live discussion at the Grand Café Utopie.

FROM 6 TO 8 PM
Free entrance and cocktail

GRAND CAFÉ UTOPIE
Waldeck Pyrmontkade 116 - 2518 JR Den Haag
Tel. 070-78 300 20

Post your messages on social media with the right hashtag: #UkraineJustice

The speakers

Anna Mykytenko

ANNA MYKYTENKO

Anna Mykytenko is a Senior Adviser and the Ukraine Country Manager at Global Rights Compliance Foundation. As a Ukrainian lawyer specialising in international criminal law and international humanitarian law, Anna advises Ukrainian state authorities and CSOs on the investigation and prosecution of international crimes. Currently, Anna is part of the Mobile Justice Teams project, which is designed to help the investigators and prosecutors in Ukraine with their efforts to bring justice and accountability to victims of international crimes committed during the full-scale Russian invasion. Previously, Anna assisted Ukrainian prosecutors in drafting their Article 15 communications to the International Criminal Court and was part of the team that drafted GRC's Legal Opinion on International Law and Defining Russia's Involvement in Crimea and Donbas.

Iryna Salii

IRYNA SALII

Iryna Salii is a Ukrainian journalist specializing in coverage of criminal justice in the field of top corruption and war crimes. After several years as an investigative journalist for the NGO “Nashi Groshi” (Our Money) and as a judicial reporter for the News Agency Censor.net, she founded her own media project, “Sudovyy Reporter” (Court Reporter) in December 2017. Editor and court reporter, she monitors court decisions, and has developed a network of correspondents across Ukraine. When Russia’s full scale invasion started on February 24, courts suddenly closed. “I felt like it was the end of my professional life,” she said at training organized with Justice Info last July in Kyiv. But soon after the surprise of the first war crimes trial in May, she was overwhelmed with work. She became a pillar of a Hirondelle Foundation programme supporting Ukrainian journalists all over the country. In Ukraine and beyond, “Sudovyy Reporter” is now a unique news reference on war crimes and war related trials, gaining steady recognition. “This is a unique moment. You see in real time how [these trials] are going,” she says. “You learn by doing. Every day is a first time, for us as well as for the prosecutors and judges.”

Thierry Cruvellier

THIERRY CRUVELLIER

Thierry Cruvellier is Editor-in-Chief of Justiceinfo.net. For more than 20 years, he has been covering trials for crimes against humanity and genocide, from Rwanda to Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia or Senegal. Between 1990 and 1996, he regularly covered the war in Sierra Leone. He was also the representative of Reporters Without Borders in the Great Lakes region (1994-1995). He was editor-in-chief of the online journal International Justice Tribune and is an Op-ed contributor to The New York Times. In 2003 he received the prestigious fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He regularly teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. He is the author of three books: Court of Remorse-Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Wisconsin University Press, 2010), The Master of Confessions (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2014), on the Khmer Rouge trials and Promised Land (Gallimard, 2018 not yet published in English), a story about the extraordinary endurance of the Sierra Leonean people over the last forty years.

Janet H. Anderson

JANET H. ANDERSON

Janet H. Anderson is one of JusticeInfo’s correspondents in The Hague. As a freelance journalist she's been covering international justice - Rwanda, The Hague, Sierra Leone, Uganda - for several decades. Janet trains and supports locally-based journalists in covering atrocity crimes trials, and has authored several manuals guiding journalists and monitors in their work. She's also the vice president of the Association of Journalists at the ICC. Together with JusticeInfo colleague Stephanie van den Berg, she co-hosts Asymmetrical Haircuts: a podcast offering a sideways look at international justice, interviewing mainly female experts in their fields.

Photo (top of the page): Vadim Shishimarin, a Russian soldier, was convicted for war crimes in Ukraine. © Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP