Healing and Accountability through Human Rights

In 2024, the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) launched a five-year program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The purpose of the Healing & Accountability through Human Rights Activity is to help Ukrainians achieve justice and address social divisions resulting from the war with Russia. The program aims to achieve accountability for war crimes, foster dialogue on difficult questions related to post-conflict recovery and begin healing and reconciliation using transitional justice tools and other human rights-based approaches.

Russia’s war on Ukraine since 2014 has attempted to undermine the social fabric of Ukrainian communities, the foundation of Ukrainian identity, and the capacity of the Government of Ukraine (GoU) to provide basic government services. The full-scale invasion in February 2022 has created aspects of polarization between various groups of Ukrainians, based either upon differences in people’s lived experiences during the war or other existing divisions having to do with gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity and other identities. ABA ROLI is beginning to help address these social divisions through innovative, Ukrainian-led interventions, including people-to-people initiatives, psychological and social support for vulnerable groups (including victims and survivors of the war crimes), enhanced access to information about transitional justice options, and monitoring and supporting documentation of war crimes and human rights violations, among others.

A lack of justice for the atrocities committed against individual Ukrainians and communities has the potential to exacerbate social divisions and lead to negative consequences. Since 2014, Ukrainian civil society has been working with the GoU on a framework for transitional justice, a term that encompasses a range of human-rights-based approaches to helping victims recover a sense of justice and dignity, supporting communities to heal divisions, and strengthening common national values. While Russia’s full-scale invasion has paused this process, ABA ROLI is beginning to help reinvigorate discussions on transitional justice in Ukraine. This framework includes judicial and non-judicial mechanisms through which victims may seek redress and communities may move toward reconciliation. Although transitional justice approaches are most often deployed once a conflict has concluded, relevant preparations should begin urgently in the Ukrainian context. There is a need for broad national dialogue, consensus-building and education about the human rights foundation of transitional justice and the ways in which communities can support shorter-term, non-prosecutorial redress for victims.