ABSTRACT
The Center for Civil Liberties is a Ukrainian human rights organization founded in 2007. For 15 years, the center has been working to protect people’s rights in Ukraine and in the OSCE region and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Gathering testimonies soon after a violation has occurred is an essential part of any human rights investigation. The organization has been involved in documenting war crimes in Donbas and working towards the release of Ukrainian political prisoners and civilian hostages held in Russia. Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, CCL has mainly focused on documenting war crimes, fighting impunity, promoting the international criminal justice system and IHL compliance, advocating for the adoption of the Rome Statute, and informing on war crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine. The CCL documents war crimes using OSINT research, investigative missions, verification, and due diligence and cooperates with national investigative authorities and international courts. In collaboration with international partners, the center plays a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes. The present chapter examines CCL’s human rights monitoring work and sheds light on the challenges of documentation in the field.
