The UN Human Rights Council today approved a resolution an independent commission of three experts will be created to investigate the human rights violations perpetrated by Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, which according to Kiev constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The resolution of the Council, made up of 47 countries, was approved with 32 votes in favor, 13 abstentions (including those of China, Cuba and Venezuela) and only two votes against (Russia itself and Eritrea).
“We know who the war criminals are and who their supreme boss is,” Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Eugenia Filipenko, said when presenting the resolution, stressing that holding accountable those responsible for abuses “It is the only way to ensure that it is not repeated anywhere in the world.”
In the debate prior to the vote, which began on Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, singled out Russia for attacking civilian targets, including schools, hospitals and residential areas, and causing an exodus of more than two million internally displaced persons and refugees.
The three experts will be appointed by the president of the Council (currently the Argentine ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Federico Villegas) and will report on the first results of his research at the 51st session of this bodyscheduled for the last third of this year.
One of the commission’s missions will be “to identify, to the extent possible, which individuals or entities have been responsible for violations of abuses to human rights” in Ukraine, in order to ensure that they are held accountable.
For your investigations they will be based on interviews, testimonies of victims, forensic materials and others, according to the text of the approved resolution.
It also condemns “in the strongest possible terms” human rights violations committed by Russia in its aggression against Ukraine and calls for “a rapid and verifiable withdrawal of Russian troops throughout the territory of Ukraine”, including its territorial waters.
Also ask for the unhindered access to Ukraine by humanitarian agencies.