Ukraine: Better Evidence in War Crimes Investigations
The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and the Prosecutor General’s Office in Ukraine are cooperating on efforts to secure better evidence and information from interviews with survivors, witnesses, and suspects in criminal cases, with a particular emphasis on war crimes. How evidence is collected and secured has a profound impact on outcomes in potential court cases. The project goal is to ensure a standard on investigation and interviewing practices in line with universal human rights.
By 2024, investigative interviewing has made its way into police and prosecutors’ training and practice. Changing the methods police and prosecutors use when gathering evidence can have a profound impact on rule of law in any country. Ukraine is progressing towards a future where police and prosecutors possess research-based skills that advance human rights and democratic criminal justice.
Investigative interviewing is a non-coercive approach to interviews in line with the Mèndez Principles (Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering). The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo has supported this professional development in Ukraine since 2017, with funding from Norway.
In 2023, the cooperation with both the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights expanded extensively with increased support from the Nansen Support Programme for Ukraine. The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights collaborates with the Norwegian Police University College, KRIPOS, the UK Metropolitan Police counter terrorism command and war crimes unit, and the Ukrainian NGO JustGroup when designing and implementing training relevant for the Ukrainian context.
Through the partnership, a core group of Ukrainian instructors now possess the skills and knowledge to train prosecutors and investigators at the introductory level. Next steps in the cooperation include standardisation, geographic expansion, and specialisation. This involves a national standard and curriculum, and training police and prosecutors from the whole country. Ukrainian instructors will now specialise in topics such as investigative management, interviewing children and vulnerable persons, trauma sensitive interviewing, war crimes and corruption investigations.
Like other states receiving offers of international assistance in times of crises, Ukraine can quickly become inundated with fragmented initiatives to help reform the criminal justice system. This programme’s focus on domestic standardisation and professionalisation add to Ukrainian capacities to coordinate and assess offers of additional assistance from international actors. This way the authorities can better decide what they need and do not need to achieve fair and efficient criminal justice.
The results stories on the webpage of the Nansen Support Programme for Ukraine are based on texts produced and shared by the civilian and humanitarian partners of the programme. The stories represent a snapshot of the results achieved to showcase the difference the Norwegian support is making.