33^rd session of the UN Human Rights Council

Agenda item 3

Clustered interactive dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and its consequences

 Intervention by the delegation of Ukraine

 September 15, 2016

 Mr. President,

We welcome conducting this dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

We are deeply alarmed that enforced disappearances continue to be widely used by the occupying Russian authorities in the illegally occupied Crimea and by Russia-backed militants in Donbas as means to spread terror among the local residents.

International human rights actors collected credible testimonies about the enforced disappearances and torture perpetrated by the individuals in the occupied Crimea acting as members of “self-defence”, Cossacks, “Crimean Army” groups. These groups have enjoyed impunity and, in some cases, the active complicity of the occupying Russian authorities.

Since March 2014, de facto authorities in Crimea failed to investigate disappearances of 16 persons, mostly Crimean Tatars.

In certain areas of Donbas under the temporarily control of the combined Russian-separatists forces, the breakdown in law and order results in persistent grave violations of the rights of civilians, including abductions and enforced disappearances. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine continues to further document such cases.

The Government of Ukraine firmly intends to eradicate the currently widespread phenomenon of enforced disappearances largely caused by the external aggression against my country. Last year Ukraine acceded to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. We count on strengthening cooperation with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Ukraine strongly upholds the position that any case of grave human rights violations including enforced disappearances must be effectively, promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigated.

Thank you.