Feedback In response to a request from the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, ADC Memorial and Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group submitted an analytical report on the enforced disappearances of Ukrainian women and girls in war zones and in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by Russia. This report, among other materials from various human rights organizations, will be taken innto account by the Committee in ptreparation of the General Comment No. 2 on this issue.
The authors based their experience on documenting and analyzing Russia‘s war crimes committed against Ukraine during the aggressive war from 2014 to the present. The report identifies a number of categories of victims of enforced disappearance, describes their particular vulnerability and situations of particular risk.
Specific risks for women and girls in situations of enforced disappearance during the war should be considered the loss of reproductive opportunities in the future due to torture and inhumane conditions of detention in places of deprivation of liberty; problems of women‘s health and physiology in captivity (lack of hygiene products, pregnancy, childbirth, abortions, etc.); the risk of sexualized violence, exploitation; various risks during filtration at checkpoints. The problem of the return of abducted children (including girls) in conditions of concealment of information by kidnappers, change of personal data of children, their indoctrination and identity change.
Among the recommendations of the ADC “Memorial“ and the KhPG:
- Support (psychological, social, medical, etc.) for female survivors of enforced disappearances and women who are looking for their abducted relatives
- Interaction of government agencies with NGOs that search for abducted women/girls
- Maintaining disaggregated statistics on cases of enforced disappearances, including gender aspects and taking into account various categories of women (ethnicity, affiliation with the military, professional activities (journalists, human rights defenders, activists, civil servants, teachers))
- Inclusion in the monitoring and investigation of all possible places of deprivation of liberty, both institutionally and spontaneously created by aggressors during the armed conflict/war.