39^th session of the UN Human Rights Council

Agenda item 2

Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary General

Intervention by Permanent Representative of Ukraine, Ambassador Yurii Klymenko

September 11, 2018

Mr. President,

M-me High Commissioner,

Let me start by congratulating you, Madame High Commissioner, on the assumption of your very important mandate and assuring you of our full support.

As a country, where the Russian aggression has brought a serious deterioration of the human rights situation, Ukraine, which you mentioned yesterday in your oral update, needs the involvement of all UN human rights mechanisms to address the issue and we count on close interaction with you and your Office in this regard.

In 2014, we invited the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to follow the situation on the ground. The numerous reports of the Mission, the largest one in Europe, give us yet another evidence of Russian crimes in Donbas and Crimea.

Residents in the occupied areas of Donbas continue to suffer from indiscriminate shelling, anti-personnel mines as well as human rights abuses, including killings, arbitrary and incommunicado detentions, torture and ill-treatment. There, the Mission is systematically denied access to critical areas and facilities to implement its monitoring mandate.

In Crimea, the Russian occupation authorities continue disregarding international law, including their obligations under humanitarian law. Violations of civil, political, economic and cultural rights and fundamental freedoms of people living on the peninsula, including the indigenous people – Crimean Tatars, are widespread.

Dozens of Ukrainian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested in Crimea under false charges and unlawfully transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation. One of them, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, has been on a hunger strike since May 14 demanding freedom for all Ukrainian political prisoners illegally detained in Russia. Today marks the 121^st day of this action - his health has gravely deteriorated.

We hope that this issue will be in the focus of special and regular attention of the Office of High Commissioner and the whole UN human rights machinery. 

Ukraine firmly believes in international justice. We seek accountability for grave international crimes and are ready to further cooperate with the UN human rights mechanisms in monitoring the situation on the ground and bringing perpetrators to justice.

I thank you.