Amira El Ahl: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Die Kulturmittler:nnen, the ifa podcast on foreign cultural policy. My name is Amira El Ahl and I'm very happy that you're joining us again. Two years ago, Ukraine was invaded by Russia. Since then, the focus of the news has moved on and the war there is no longer reported on every day and with the same intensity as in the beginning.
One group that is keeping a close eye on the war is the Ukraine 5AM coalition. This is an association of over 30 Ukrainian NGOs that document war crimes in Ukraine. The coalition is being honored for its work with this year's ifa award. The ifa award, ifa Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, recognizes the contribution of individuals and institutions to fostering transcultural relations through their social, socio-political or artistic work.
Today, we are talking to Nadia Volkova in this podcast. She is a lawyer and the director of the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group. This group is part of the 5AM coalition. She worked together with Amnesty International to combat human rights abuses in Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Central Asia and South Caucasus. She prepared court applications and represented victims of human rights violations before national courts and to the European Court of Human Rights. Welcome to the Kulturmittler:innen, Nadia Volkova.
Nadia Volkova: Thank you.
Amira El Ahl: So, the Ukraine 5 AM coalition is a coalition of human rights organizations that collect and document war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the armed aggression in Ukraine. Can you explain what crimes count as war crimes?
Nadia Volkova: Well, yes, of course. The main sort of guiding document on what constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and crime of genocide and also a fourth core crime is a crime of aggression. They're actually all outlined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and those are the crimes that we at the coalition document and are hoping will be prosecuted by national and international courts.
Amira el Ahl: So, what happens with the documented crimes and how difficult is it to bring them to justice? Because you said you're in your hope to bring them to the court.
Nadia Volkova: It's very difficult. Those are the crimes that are the most complex crimes. They're also called core crimes or atrocity crimes or grave international crimes. They are the hardest to prove. They are the hardest to collect the evidence of. There are a lot of complicated procedures and rules of evidence that apply. So it's a very long game, if you like. It's going to take decades to counter the consequences in terms of justice and accountability when we talk about this war.
Amira el Ahl: Have you already brought crimes to the courts or not yet?
Nadia Volkova: The domestic system, at the level of the domestic system, some of the incidents are being investigated, although it's a very difficult process for the domestic system. Some of the crimes have already been prosecuted by the courts. But not very high-level, high-ranking perpetrators have been. In fact, the majority of them, well, most of them are low-level perpetrators. In terms of the International Criminal Court has also opened the investigation into the situation in Ukraine in 2022. And there have already been two arrest warrants issued, one against the president of the Russian Federation and another one against the children's rights commissioner in Russia, and also there have been instances where some of the organizations already submitted cases to the universal jurisdiction mechanisms in Germany, for example.
Also, you have different states who actually open structural investigations, including Germany, Sweden, France, investigating some of the episodes, crimes that allegedly have been committed against French nationals, and so on. And also the UK, for example. And then we as organization are about to submit a...an application to the UN Human Rights Committee to test the deportation of children case there.
Amira el Ahl: The coalition bears the name 5 a.m. as it was five o'clock in the morning when Ukrainians across the country awoke to the sound of explosions on February 24th, 2022, and the armed aggression started. It has been operating since that day, but many of your partners have been active since 2014, documenting the suffering and the crimes in Crimea and the Donbass. In the initial weeks and month of the war, how many and what kind of organizations became part of the coalition? I mean, one is yours, but what are the other organizations that became part of the coalition?
Nadia Volkova: So, I believe it's a bit difficult to recall right now because there's been a lot happening since then and we now around 38 organizations in the coalition but we started off with I believe 17. Those were the organizations that expressed their interest and willingness to found the coalition in the first days of the invasion. And yes, that's right, as you mentioned correctly, the majority of those organizations were the ones who had been working on the armed conflict and justice and accountability in the context of armed conflict in Ukraine since 2014 in Crimea and Donbas, and they'd already had some experience of documenting and... documenting grave crimes and representing victims of grave crimes at the national level and also in the regional and international courts. So there had been some experience, but since then we've had a lot of organizations who joined and some of them, well... a good number of them actually had been doing something else, working on human rights in general before, not necessarily in the context of our conflict, but then they changed their profile and they sort of focused more on documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Amira el Ahl: So, as you just said, the coalition's objective is first and foremost to document and inform about the war crimes and of course to protect victims. But what are the coalition's short-term and the long-term goals? Can you maybe explain that?
Nadia Volkova: So, the coalition, we have four main sort of tracks in which coalition is sort of working. So, and they also at the same time, the goals of the coalition in a way, like short-term goals. We work on documenting war crimes. And of course, the goal is to...there is to document as many violations as possible and then make sure that there is an account of everything that has been happening since the invasion, and also probably since before the invasion, because we've got that information accumulated by different organizations as well. Because clearly there are, you know, there are patterns that we can already see and identify, not just from the time of the invasion, but actually since 2014. And then the idea is that information is going to be used to prosecute and for advocacy purposes. This is our second track. Which is international and national advocacy, where we advocate for legislative changes, for ratification of the Rome Statute, for different, we propose different, you know, positions on the legal matters, because obviously, you know, Ukraine, the situation in Ukraine in terms of justice and accountability presents a very new and sort of very large challenge for the authorities domestically but also for the entire international community and the entire global justice architecture.
Also we work sort of in the information track and awareness raising track where we try to sort of share the results of our work, share our observations, share our opinions and positions as to the legal issues, the initiatives, the problems, the challenges that we have identified and also we have an analytical track where we analyze everything that is happening and try to both recommendations as to various issues that arise out of the context.
Amira el Ahl: Yeah, that's very interesting. And I would like to ask you, since you said, like you, for example, one of the tracks is like to, like it's advocacy internationally, but also nationally, because you're for legal change, for example, you know, you proposed, you said you propose different positions. Can you maybe give us examples about the achievements of the coalition or have there been any yet when it comes, for example, to legal change?
Nadia Volkova: I would say we're on the path. I can't say, you know, it's difficult to sort of assess for the moment because it's, you know, the challenge is, like I said, huge. And I think it's very important that the voice of civil society is also heard when the important decisions are made at the political level. So for example, the latest one, right, we have this issue in Ukraine, that's like an example of the national advocacy. We have an issue of prosecute...The authorities basically prosecuting a lot of the people from the temporarily occupied territories as collaborators. And those prosecutions are not necessarily based on quality investigations. And very often, those crimes, they misclassified, misqualified. And in that regard, we're trying to make sure that whenever people are prosecuted for something, you know, for crimes or alleged crimes in the context of armed conflict, that those prosecutions and trials are fair, you know, procedurally fair and also from the standpoint of fair trial rights.
So what we've seen lately, there were the courts which have been tasked with prosecuting those cases. They have been...There was a period of time where there has been no sentence that would not basically punish someone, right? So they all were guilty verdicts. But what we've been advocating against that, we've been advocating for quality trials as I mentioned and in the past year we've seen a drop in the number of guilty verdicts and we consider it in the circumstances a good achievement, a tangible one. That's one example from the domestic advocacy.
From international advocacy I guess the we can consider a good result, the fact that a 5AM coalition is a coalition of organizations whereby a lot of the international stakeholders consult with. And whenever there are some decisions made, you know, we invited to participate in these discussions, we invited to express our, you know, opinion or pose our position on issues. For example, we are co-chairs of the Dialogue Group, which was founded as a platform by the government of the Netherlands, the European Commission and the International Criminal Court.
We've also been advocating for heavily for the ratification of the Rome Statute, for instance, by Ukraine, because it has been a long-term problem of Ukraine. And I think we haven't gotten there yet, but the fact that the international community is very well aware of that issue right now is also an achievement for us, and hopefully right now there will be a push in light of Ukraine being considered right now as a member of the European Union in the nearest future. And there is a demand from the European Union to implement many reforms, including on the rule of law. And we're hoping that ratification of the Rome Statute is going to be one of the priorities in terms of the reforms.
Amira el Ahl: So many organizations were formed, especially at the beginning of the war. What makes the 5 a.m. coalition different from other projects? You just mentioned that you were like at your advocacy internationally, where you were invited as a stakeholder. Is this something that makes you different from other projects or is there also other things where you say that differentiates you from other organizations that were formed, especially after the war began?
Nadia Volkova: Well, I think we are sort of, we are unique in the way that we bring together the sort of the voice of civil society to, yes, the international arena, to the domestic arena, and we participate in all their international and domestic initiatives. We consulted with our opinion counts. And I think at this point, we can say that we have a steady, sort of steady demand for our voice and opinion to be consulted with and I think and to take into consideration.
It's very difficult for me to assess in terms of the other projects, because we know that there is another coalition in Ukraine called Tribunal for Putin, for instance, or there are groups of different organizations who come together to advocate for, for example, the International Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression. But I think in terms of what we are doing, the scope of our work is probably the sort of the broadest in a sense that we sort of follow the process, you know, we are engaged with all the elements of the sort of accountability process from documentation to building cases and bringing them to court.
Amira el Ahl: Because you were just saying documentation and building a case. You said earlier that the hardest is to find the proof to build a case and to then to complete the procedures and to bring it to court. How difficult is it also when you consider like fake news, hacker attacks? How much does this make you a work even harder or like how important is this also for your work or doesn't that concern you at all like this is from disinformation on that level.
Nadia Volkova: I think at this point probably it doesn't bear that much significance on what we're doing because we're just collecting the information and for individual organizations who are building cases within the coalition they sort of you know they fairly experienced in verification of that information but also you know the standard to which we work is not as high as for example for the state authorities. We're trying to do our best, but of course the instruments that are within our reach and availability are not as advanced, so to speak, right? But obviously we are aware of the standards and we're trying to adhere to the international standards and when we, you know, documenting or documenting, collecting information and then processing, analyzing it for cases. For example, if we receive…the information comes from an open source, you know, that there is a Berkeley Protocol standard and we need to properly archive this information, to preserve it properly, then to verify it and verify from various sources, not just using the internet tools preferably corroborate this evidence. So there are there are many ways in which we can be creative.
But like I said, you know, obviously because we are submitting this information to courts, obviously they would need to then evaluate and assess you know the quality of this information the sources of the information and so on but we've many of our organizations have had experience already in building cases. And, you know, it's not, it's not a new challenge for many of us. It's just, it's new in the way of the scale, right? How you, how you manage, how you prioritize. That's the biggest challenge for us right now.
Amira el Ahl: Yeah, I can imagine. Let's go to another topic. The German culture of remembrance of World War II often does not include Ukraine. So, the war crimes of Nazi Germany and Ukraine are under researched and often neglected. Do you think Germany has because of this a special responsibility towards Ukraine in the ongoing war?
Nadia Volkova: Ah, it's a tricky question. Yes and no, but I would be careful about mashing the two. I would keep them separate probably. Also, because this situation we are faced with right now is polar opposite to what it was from conceptually speaking, right? Because back in the, you know, when we're talking about World War II, for instance, Germany was the enemy. Also, we taught that, right? And this is the historical truth. Whereas right now, Germany is actually an ally, and Russia is the enemy for us. And in terms of the support from Germany, I think we're getting it. I had a conversation with a friend of mine over the weekend, and he's someone who is serving right now. And even though, you know, in Ukraine, you know, for the purposes of being open and honest, there are the opinions on how helpful Germany has been is split, but it also depends on your expectations, I think. You sort of assess and evaluate that on the basis of your expectations. So there are groups who think that the international community owe us because we sort of, we are in Europe and we are, you know, that's one of the opinions that we are defending the entire Europe, not just...not just our country, which may be true to some degree. But then also, I mean, for us, it doesn't really matter. I mean, we should be grateful for all for any of the help that we're getting. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that we are not left alone that we are being supported, including by Germany in to however extent and degree is possible, I guess, you know, and in that regard, I think we're okay.
Amira el Ahl: Yeah, but it's interesting that you say that because, you know, you were talking about what expectations one has and, you know, to acknowledge that one is helped and to be thankful for that. But if we talk about expectations and maybe look into how countries are supporting the Ukraine across Europe, countries such as Estonia and Latvia who are of course much smaller than Germany, support Ukraine the most if we take into consideration the commitments as a percentage of donor gross domestic product, the GDP, their support is over 1% of their GDP, whereas Germany's support amounts only to 0.27% of its GDP. So, considering, you know, maybe also the responsibility, maybe the historic responsibility, but also like how important, you know, as you said, the Ukraine is defending not just the Ukraine, but also Europe as a whole. So how would you feel about the support or assess Germany's position when you see these numbers? I mean, you think, again, it's a matter of expectations, but you think it's enough what Germany is doing when you consider its strength, economical strength?
Nadia Volkova: Yes, I understand. Well, I'm not the best person to probably assess from the political and economic perspective, but I can only speak from the standpoint of what Germany can do in terms of justice and accountability, because obviously overall, following the World War II experience for Germany, it's gone through a transitional justice process, successfully compared to the other countries. And you guys have built that experience, you know what that means to prosecute people for atrocity crimes, you have a very, you know, one of the exemplary legal systems in Europe at least. And I think that it would immensely help Ukraine if Germany stepped up on that front on justice and accountability. The reason why I'm saying that is because, for example, we have submitted a case together with our German partner organization to the German federal prosecutor, and the case was about sexual violence in Kiev region. And basically, it's a case where all the requirements for the German federal prosecutor to open an individual case were met, but they decided not to do it.
Amira el Ahl: Based on which reason?
Nadia Volkova: Based on the fact that basically there is very little prospect that a perpetrator will turn up or perpetrators will turn up in German territory and they will be able to successfully execute an arrest warrant should it be issued. But I think it's still... even if you know that could be true.
I think, symbolically speaking, it would have been a right thing to do to open a case, and to even just for the purposes of showing support. That's the kind of support that Ukraine right now needs. And essentially, I think, you know, okay, fine, there is a structural investigation that is being conducted by the German authorities, where they're helping. But then it doesn't it's not clear where they're gonna pass this information to you. What's going to happen with it if they are not going to prosecute it themselves because you know that reasoning can be applied to every single case in a way. So that means what then for there's no clarity. There's no understanding and I think you know, like I said for the sake of Symbolism for symbolic support of Ukrainian justice processes that would be important to review and reconsider that decision, that would have been a real show of support in the sense right now, and it would have been really important for at least civil society and as well for the victims, mostly for the victims.
Amira el Ahl: Yeah, I totally understand that. And it's very interesting that you say that, you know, that how important symbolic support is, because maybe some people don't understand also the importance of that. And since you were talking about this, how can civil society help your coalition? I mean, how can it or even individuals and organizations support the work of the Ukraine 5am coalition? even if it's just symbolic, as you said, and how important it is.
Nadia Volkova: Well, I think from our experience, we have been getting great support already from our partner organization in Germany who we've been working on cases together. And I think generally speaking from the civil society, even like in the context of other building international mechanisms for Ukraine to bring the perpetrators justice to advocate on behalf of Ukraine in different international fora, you know, they have been doing it. And I think my advice and my expectation would be that they will continue to do so until we actually get good results.
Amira el Ahl: I'm sure they will but if you say advocate on behalf of Ukraine like what kind of support would help you the most? What we say?
Nadia Volkova: For example, ratification of the Rome Statute is one of the priorities, as I already mentioned, setting up accountability mechanism. Justice and accountability mechanism that would actually be effective based on the needs of the justice system rather than just some political gains and political motivation. So, things like that, you know, and helping to build effective cooperation, helping to communicate our messages to German decision makers who then communicate those messages to their counterparts in different states. So, things like that.
Amira el Ahl: You mentioned earlier the case that you brought to Germany of gender-based violence. I mean gender-based violence is an issue in each conflict, I guess. What kind of role does it play in the current conflict in the war in Ukraine?
Nadia Volkova: Well, it's a bit of a difficult question because we, you know, the 30% of our territory is occupied right now. So that means that we have no access to those territories. And that means that we don't know what's happening there. So it's very difficult to assess the extent, the scale of that crime. The territories that have been returned under Ukrainian control or have been liberated from the Russian occupation, we have access to those and we know there is a good number of victims, but also there are sort of cultural specificities whereby not many women are willing to come forward and to fight for their rights because well first of all like I said it's a cultural thing but also the fact that they don't they don't understand what to expect like they would have to relieve their trauma but then what for you know to what end and I think… I mean it's an issue at the domestic level also because
Well, first of all, our capacity of our domestic system is not that great. In fact, it's very bad. That's what I'm trying to say. And also the outreach is non-existent as well. So it's only because of the civil society that these people have a chance to find out how they can fight for their rights if there is an interest and willingness to actually fight.
Amira el Ahl: But I guess it's always a difficult thing for women to come forward when they have experienced gender-based violence. I guess it's not just a problem in the Ukraine but like international and international conflicts a problem. The coalition frequently collaborates with the international audience as well. So what are your key messages to this audience? And do you think this message comes across?
Nadia Volkova: So, we've had this issue of the international experts coming into Ukraine and trying to assist, for which we are very grateful. But unfortunately, the majority of international experts who are being deployed or by the governments who are doing it out of their own volition. They come in and not necessarily submerge themselves into the context. So especially in terms of the specificities of legislation and sort of the cultural and mental background of the country. And just because they've had an experience in another context, I think that they can come in and magically suggest and propose a solution. It doesn't work like that. It's that what we're seeing right now, in order to give a tailored and effective advice, you have to understand the context within which you're operating and working with. And my advice would be to actually understand the study, learn and understand the context before you come in and take on the responsibility of, you know, being a guide or giving advice and counsel on the specific issues of justice and accountability, especially if you're working with a domestic context.
And also, I think it's very important that international community is firm in their sort of demands and expectations of Ukraine. Because, for example, we know that Ukraine asks for quite a good assistance. But on the other hand, we are not willing to, for example, take an important step, such as a certification of the Rome Statute. So international community, for example, could insist on that, and they could be firm with that. And there are different instruments to impose that obligation and to make sure that it's implemented by Ukraine. So I think in things like that, I think it's really important that international community sort of stands firmly on what's important, on the justice accountability related values and that Ukraine's also you know adheres to them.
Amira el Ahl: I guess this is a very good way to end our conversation. Thank you so much, Miss Volkova, for taking the time to talk with us today.
Nadia Volkova: Thank you.
Amira el Ahl: That leads us to the end of this episode on Ukraine. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to recommend Die Kulturmittler:innen to others. A year ago we published six special episodes on the war in Ukraine. Among other things we talked about social media during the war, sanctions and the cultural scene. You can listen to these and over 60 other episodes of Die Kulturmittler:innen wherever you get your podcast, we’re available on all common streaming platforms.
You can also subscribe to our podcast there, that way you won't miss any of the upcoming episodes. You can find even more information about the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the ifa award on our website ifa.de and our social media channels, for example on Instagram as @ifa.de and on LinkedIn as ifa.Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.
If you have any questions or comments about the Kulturmittler:innen, please send us an email to podcast(at)ifa.de. With that, I say goodbye. My name is Amira El Ahl. Thank you for listening.
