High time for Ukraine to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC

From 10-11 June 2019, the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group (ULAG), Global Rights Compliance (GRC) and the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) organized a conference in Kyiv entitled “Accountability for Grave Crimes in Ukraine: the ICC and Complementarity Options for Ukraine”.

Nadia Volkova, ULAG’s Director, shares her views on the situation below.

It has been nearly two decades since Ukraine signed the Rome Statute, expressing its intention to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), in 2000. However, a year later Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, misinterpreting and shunning away from all the responsibility that the potential ratification carried, declared the Rome Statute incompatible with the Constitution of Ukraine where it “complemented national jurisdiction”.

Being under pressure from victims and civil society to ratify the Statute, in 2016 Ukrainian Parliament adopts an amendment to article 124 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which although does not fully extinguish the possibility of ratification, it effectively delays it until 30 June 2019, thereby taking pressure and the heat off of itself for another three years.

In the next three years that follow various myths about what joining the ICC would mean for Ukrainian soldiers, thereby creating obstacle among the decision-makers for Ukraine’s ratification of the Rome Statute.

Undoubtedly, the moment will come when Ukraine will inevitably have to ratify, it is after all one of the demands of the EU codified in the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement.  It is simply a question of when. The answer is obvious to many but naturally not the decision-makers: the sooner, the better!