Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk speaks at event co-organized by MIGS and the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression.

Highlighting the urgency of the harmonization through the human impact of the current ICC jurisdiction – Ms. Oleksandra Matviichuk, Chairwoman of Center for Civil Liberties and laureate of 2022 Nobel Peace Prize (Ukraine), delivered the following comments for the NGOs Side Event to the ASP Special Session at the UN in New York. You can also view a video of her talk here.

The crime of aggression in, and against, Ukraine, did not start on 24 February 2022, when a fully-fledged invasion tried to occupy the capital city, Kyiv: It started in 2014, when the Russian Federation violated the Budapest treaty and utilized their troops in Crimea to mastermind an illegal annexation of the peninsula and sponsor a purported rebellion in the Donbass region under the fake label of the “Donetsk people’s republic” and the “Luhansk people’s republic”.

The crime of aggression that we are experiencing today, on a daily basis, is not only a violation of the territorial integrity and the political independence of Ukraine (a gross violation of the UN Charter prohibition to use force), but also a widespread and systematic crime that affects the lives of all Ukrainians, taking away the right to life from civilians and servicemembers who are dying every day as a result of an illegal war of aggression, and spreading terror amongst an entire population.

The crime of aggression creates mass victimization, it is not of a lesser gravity than war crimes or crimes against humanity, as we can testify with our everyday experience here in Ukraine. It is therefore a total non-sense that the Rome Statute, as amended in Kampala in 2010, contains restrictions regarding the application of this crime, exempting alleged perpetrators from States that are not Parties when they execute aggressive wars against States that have decided to be protected by the ICC jurisdiction having freely joined the Rome Statute of the ICC!

Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute only in 2024, more than 10 years after it had accepted the Court’s jurisdiction as a Non Party, also because Ukraine felt that the ICC would have been powerless regarding the most serious crime committed in our territories against all Ukrainians, namely, the crime of aggression. However, being a Party to the Statute now means that Ukraine can contribute to reforming the Court’s jurisdiction over aggression and support the proposal for harmonization presented at this Special Session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP).

The history of Ukraine since 2014 demonstrates that there can be no impunity for the crime of aggression. Such impunity, if not tackled, becomes an incentive to commit new aggressions, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity within the framework of the illegal armed conflict that leaders believed to have launched in a total impunity zone.

The Special Session of the ASP has been mandated with the historic task to fix the impunity-gap created by the Kampala compromise, so that future victims of aggression should not be obliged to call for the creation of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression, as Ukraine correctly did and it is now implementing via an international treaty with the Council of Europe. The ICC is a permanent Court, pre-established, with a potentially universal mandate, and the Center for Civil Liberties calls upon all States Parties to the Rome Statute to take the right decision now, without postponements and unnecessary delays, and amend Article 15 bis of the Statute so that future crimes of aggression in the territories of States that will ratify the amendments can be effectively investigated, prosecuted, and adjudicated before the ICC.