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The draft law needs to be more specific. Commentary on the draft law “On the State Policy of the Transition Period” by the Head of the Luhansk Regional Human Rights Center “Alternative” Valery Novykov.
Fighting impunity is one of the key issues of transitional justice.
Article 17, paragraph 1, of the draft law states that persons who have committed crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot be exempted from criminal responsibility or pardoned, and no amnesty can be applied to such persons.
The fact is that in practice it will be difficult to prove that a particular crime falls under the jurisdiction of the ICC. Thus, this provision will only be relevant for a small number of crimes, the investigation of which will manage to prove that they really fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC.
It would be more correct and fairer to first adopt in the second reading the long-discussed draft law “On war criminals”, which harmonizes the Criminal Code with international law. And only then, in this draft law, indicate the list of specific articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, according to which amnesty, pardon and exemption from accountability cannot be applied.
Although Article 23 of the draft law outlines general principles of accountability for offenses committed during the temporary occupation, such important issues should be defined very specifically. In the same Article 23, there is a reference to a draft law that can / should be developed and contain an extended list of cases when persons cannot be released from criminal responsibility, pardoned or amnestied. That is, without the development and adoption of an additional draft law, the issue of prosecution and release from it is not entirely settled.
It would be more appropriate to ensure there is a complete package of relevant bills for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. This would help avoid a situation when a draft law that lacks specificity is adopted, while another bill which will have significant details and cause serious contradictions in the society, will not be adopted by the Verkhovna Rada. Considering that such practice is not new in Ukraine, we should keep that in mind and not let the time frames of the adoption of related bills delay the process of transitional justice.