Author: Gunduz Mamedov, PhD in Law, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine in 2019-2021, expert of the Coalition "Ukraine. Five in the Morning"
The Peace Summit has recently ended in Switzerland. Everyone expressed their opinion and gave an assessment of this event. At the same time, I think the summit has once again shed light on a very important issue: we must now carefully prepare for the period "after the war". Even the active phase of the war should not take away our ability to design the future. It is difficult to talk about peace if we are not ready for it. And our actions today will largely determine what kind of peace it will be.
The world has many approaches and tools to restore life after a period of armed conflict. And quite often, it is important to start building its architecture not after the end of the war or the overthrow of an undemocratic regime, but to work with the demands of society, to prepare institutions and the population for future difficulties, so that "peace" does not become a new shock. In general, this policy is called "transitional justice". In theory, transitional justice is a legal concept, but it is not necessary to delve into complex legal terms to understand it. In practice, it is about the rules and peculiarities of a society's exit from an armed conflict or transition from an undemocratic to a democratic regime. Quite often, unfortunately, these periods are no less complex and controversial and are accompanied by political, social, and economic crises, the demand for justice, the need to rebuild not only buildings but also institutions, and, of course, they are also about understanding and realising the experience of war and rebuilding consciousness. No matter how difficult it is, we have to prepare for this stage.
Both while working in the prosecutor's office and when I was mobilised into the Armed Forces, I kept studying the experience of transitional justice and came to certain conclusions. First of all, that there are no ready-made "recipes" on how to get out of a conflict easily and with the least losses. That is why we cannot simply take a manual or use the experience of another country. In general, Germany is considered to be the most successful example of transitional justice, a country that was itself an aggressor and was actually "helped" to implement transitional justice. So for us, this example is interesting, but not entirely relevant. On the other hand, we don't have to copy the experience of another state completely, but we can use successful cases and elements. Ultimately, it is important to understand that transitional justice is more about social dialogue and, as a result, a certain social agreement on key points of state development.
What are the main "pillars" of transitional justice? Usually, there are four of them (of course, this list can be supplemented, but these are fundamental): compensation for victims of armed conflict, prosecution for international crimes, the right to truth, and, ultimately, reform of the system, which should be a factor in preventing future conflict. This means that a resident of Kherson, who was kept in a torture chamber, must be sure that his testimony against his torturers will not be wasted, but will become part of the charges; a resident of Dnipro, whose apartment was hit by a rocket, must understand where to go to receive compensation; and residents of the de-occupied territories must know that they will not be convicted for trying to survive the occupation.
In fact, we have been facing the challenges of transitional justice since the beginning of our independence, when we faced the difficult task of building democratic institutions. Therefore, we have already tried to implement certain elements of transitional justice: in the 90s, after the revolutions of 2004 and 2013-2014, and after the beginning of Russian aggression. For example, such attempts include lustration, the establishment of the Institute of National Remembrance, the development of the so-called War Department in the Office of the Prosecutor General to coordinate the investigation of international crimes, and the institutionalisation of anti-corruption bodies. Unfortunately, this was a chaotic process. That is why we need comprehensive approaches now and in the future. Real changes instead of imitation. So, let's look at the key positions on each of the points that require public dialogue to eventually become our vectors.
25.06.2024
