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Resolution 2198 (2018)
Humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine
1. The Parliamentary Assembly is alarmed
by the humanitarian situation resulting from the ongoing Russian
war against Ukraine, which is taking place in certain areas of the
Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and from the occupation and attempted
annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. More than 4 million people
are in need of humanitarian assistance. The armed conflict has taken
the lives of more than 10 000 people. The number of people injured
during the war has reached more than 24 000. In addition, more than 1.6 million people
are internally displaced and almost half a million people are seeking
asylum in other countries, most of them in the Russian Federation.
The Assembly calls on all member States to step up their political
co-operation in order to put an end to this conflict and the suffering
of the civil population.
2. The Assembly is particularly concerned about the alarming
humanitarian situation in the occupied territories in the Donetsk
and Luhansk regions, which has been aggravated by the restrictions
imposed by the illegal armed groups on the freedom of movement and
humanitarian access. The affected population suffers from a lack
of security, problems with water and energy supplies and access
to social benefits and medical care.
3. The Assembly takes note of the new Ukrainian law on the peculiarities
of the State policy to ensure the State sovereignty of Ukraine over
the temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk, adopted
by the Ukrainian Parliament on 18 January 2018. This law defines
the State policy of restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty over the temporarily
occupied territories, facilitates the protection of the rights and
freedoms of the citizens of Ukraine who live in these territories
in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including the satisfaction of
their social, economic and cultural needs, and safeguards the rights
of Ukrainian citizens over their properties in the temporarily occupied
territories.
4. The Assembly regrets that no significant progress has been
achieved since the adoption of its Resolution 2067 (2015) on missing
persons during the conflict in Ukraine, on the exchange and liberation
of captured persons during the war in Ukraine. The process of exchange
of captured persons has been highly politicised and blocked by the
representatives of the illegal armed groups of the Donetsk and Luhansk
regions in the working group on humanitarian issues of the Trilateral
Contact Group on Ukraine. There is no mechanism ensuring support
to people who have been released from captivity, or to the families
of captured persons. The Assembly welcomes the efforts of the Ukrainian
authorities to solve the issue of captured persons by the unilateral
release of some of these people. At the same time, the Assembly
welcomes the long-awaited exchange of captured persons between Kyiv
and Russia-led forces in December 2017 and encourages all sides
to continue the negotiation process with a view to enabling all
captives to return to their homes in the near future.
5. The Assembly expresses its regret that the Russian Federation
continues to ignore Resolution
2133 (2016) on legal remedies for human rights violations
on the Ukrainian territories outside the control of the Ukrainian
authorities and has not implemented any of the requests to the Russian
authorities made therein.
6. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates
that around 1 500 people have gone missing since the beginning of
the war and over 650 cases remain unsolved. The Assembly welcomes
the submission of the draft law on the status of missing persons
to the Ukrainian Parliament and hopes for its swift adoption. It
also expresses its appreciation to the ICRC for its assistance to
the families of missing persons, as well as the important work done
as regards tracing, exhumation, identification of remains and collection
of forensic information.
7. The Assembly strongly condemns the Russian policy of shifting
the demographic composition of the population of illegally annexed
Crimea by forcing the pro-Ukrainian population and, in particular,
the Crimean Tatars to leave their homeland, while at the same time
increasing migration of the Russian population to the peninsula,
and calls on the Russian Federation to put an end to this repression.
The Assembly stresses that this Russian policy should be viewed
as a violation of Article 49 of Geneva Convention (IV) relative
to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, according
to which individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations
of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of
the occupying power or to that of any other country, occupied or
not, are prohibited, regardless of their motivation. Since the occupation
in 2014, 44 Ukrainians have disappeared in Crimea: 6 of them were
found dead, 17 were released from detention, 2 people have been
convicted and 19 are still considered missing. The problem of private
property in Crimea has become a very acute issue, in particular
for people who bought their houses or apartments before the Russian
occupation. Around 600 people in Sevastopol have received court
decisions cancelling their purchase contracts. This practice is
a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
8. The Assembly considers that the situation of people who have
been displaced as a consequence of the war and of the annexation
of Crimea by the Russian Federation remains a crucial challenge
for the Ukrainian Government. It also believes that the adoption
of a comprehensive strategy for internally displaced persons (IDPs),
ensuring their political and social rights and their integration,
should be one of the government’s priority tasks.
9. The Assembly therefore calls on all sides of the war to:
9.1. respect the civilian nature
of infrastructure and ensure the protection of civilians and their
full access to essential services;
9.2. release and exchange all prisoners of war and people captured
during the war, and exchange all mortal remains;
9.3. provide the families of missing persons with the necessary
assistance in finding their loved ones or, where appropriate, identifying
their remains, in close co-operation with the ICRC;
9.4. establish a joint working group to deal with the issue
of missing persons, and ensure its effective operation, including
representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the ICRC and
the illegal armed forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions;
9.5. take urgent measures to mark all areas contaminated with
explosive remnants of war and organise special operations for their
removal;
9.6. open new crossing points, in particular a checkpoint at
Zolote in the Luhansk region.
10. The Assembly urges the Russian authorities to:
10.1. cease all financial and military
support to the illegal armed groups in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions;
10.2. cease recognition of the passports and any other documents,
including court decisions and documents confirming property rights,
issued on the territories controlled by the illegal armed groups
of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions;
10.3. uphold all its obligations under applicable international
law as an occupying power and to ensure respect for the human rights
and the security of all people living in occupied Crimea;
10.4. lift the ban on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People,
as ordered by the International Court of Justice on provisional
measures in the case of Ukraine v. Russia (19
April 2017), as well as the entry bans on its leaders, as the Mejlis
is the legitimate self-representative organ of the Crimean Tatar community;
10.5. release all Ukrainian prisoners captured and imprisoned
in the Russian Federation and in annexed Crimea in the context of
the war, while respecting their rights and freedoms, and, until
they are released, allow the monitoring of their state of health
and conditions of detention by independent international monitors
and international organisations;
10.6. ensure unhindered access to annexed Crimea to international
organisations, international monitoring bodies and human rights
non-governmental organisations;
10.7. use its influence over the armed groups controlling the
territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to demand the release
of all captured persons;
10.8. cease the policy of shifting the demographic composition
of the population of annexed Crimea by moving its own population
from Russian territory to the peninsula;
10.9. stop forcing Ukrainian citizens living in annexed Crimea
to accept Russian passports and stop the forcible deportation of
Ukrainian citizens without Russian passports from annexed Crimea;
10.10. execute in full all the demands contained in Assembly Resolutions 2132 (2016) on
the political consequences of the Russian aggression in Ukraine
and 2133 (2016) to stop military aggression against Ukraine and
restore its territorial integrity;
10.11. execute in full all the demands contained in Assembly Resolutions 1990 (2014) on reconsideration
on substantive grounds of the previously ratified credentials of
the Russian delegation, Resolution
2034 (2015) on the challenge, on substantive grounds,
of the still unratified credentials of the delegation of the Russian
Federation and 2063 (2015) on consideration of the annulment of
the previously ratified credentials of the delegation of the Russian
Federation (follow-up to paragraph 16 of Resolution 2034 (2015)), to ensure
the rights of minorities in Crimea.
11. The Assembly urges the Ukrainian authorities to:
11.1. bring the Criminal Code and
Code on Criminal Procedure of Ukraine into line with the provisions of
international humanitarian law and international criminal law;
11.2. ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court as soon as possible, which will make it possible to carry
out effective investigations into concrete cases of violations of
international humanitarian law during the war in Ukraine;
11.3. release all Russian prisoners and persons captured by
the illegal armed groups of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and
imprisoned in Ukraine in the context of the war, while respecting
their rights and freedoms, and, until they are released, allow the
monitoring of their state of health and conditions of detention
by independent international monitors;
11.4. revise the law on the peculiarities of the State policy
to ensure the State sovereignty of Ukraine over the temporarily
occupied territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, based on
the Minsk agreements, and to fully guarantee the social protection
and meet the basic humanitarian needs of the civilian population
in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk
regions;
11.5. adopt legislation on humanitarian demining actions;
11.6. revise the law on humanitarian assistance to facilitate
the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the war-affected territories;
11.7. accord the necessary financial resources to local administrations
responsible for assistance to IDPs and other victims of the war;
11.8. adopt a governmental programme of assistance to the families
of persons who have gone missing or been captured during the war
in Ukraine, as well as to the families of people captured and imprisoned
by the Russian authorities in annexed Crimea and on the territory
of the Russian Federation in the context of the war;
11.9. draft, adopt and finance a State programme on psychological
assistance to military personnel and civilians who suffer from post-traumatic
stress disorder;
11.10. create a national mechanism for the compensation of civilian
victims injured or whose families were killed during the war;
11.11. provide mechanisms for ensuring the voting rights of IDPs
in all elections, including at local level;
11.12. make information available to Ukrainian citizens on legalisation
and international protection procedures for migrants and asylum
seekers in Europe;
11.13. ensure the right to adequate housing and resolve housing
matters as an integral part of sustainable solutions for IDPs, including
the adoption of a legal framework for the introduction and implementation
of different types of housing programmes;
11.14. simplify the procedure for receiving social and pension
payments by disconnecting them from the IDP registration process,
in particular by amending Cabinet of Ministers Resolutions Nos.
365, 505 and 637, as well as any other relevant normative acts;
11.15. introduce administrative procedures for Ukrainian citizens
living in the temporarily occupied territories for the regularisation
of their identity papers;
11.16. create a mechanism to ensure the rights of people who
left Ukraine after the outbreak of the war in 2014 and, in particular,
ensure that they are not at risk of statelessness.
12. The Assembly asks the Council of Europe Development Bank to
create affordable loan programmes to be used to support housing
projects for vulnerable persons in Ukraine, including IDPs in need
of permanent housing, reconstruction projects and health and education
facilities in the most devastated areas.
13. The Assembly encourages the Ukrainian Government to consider
the possibility of joining the Council of Europe Development Bank,
and before that to co-operate with other member States of the bank
in developing assistance projects to meet the housing needs of IDPs
in Ukraine.
14. The Assembly calls on the Council of Europe member States
to ensure the fair and non-discriminatory consideration of applications
for international protection of Ukrainian nationals in Europe, taking
into account all individual circumstances, in particular the specific
needs of vulnerable people escaping war or repression.
15. The Assembly calls on the international community to convene
an international humanitarian conference on Ukraine to raise funding
for the humanitarian relief plan and devise strategies for the co-ordination
of humanitarian assistance.