On the 25th of April 2023 the Project Sunflowers, the Pravo-Justice Project and The National School for Judges of Ukraine organized the informative session on Deportation of Ukrainians During the Russian-Ukrainian War. 

Olha Sribniak from the Pravo-Justice Project welcomed the guests and then Iwan Bałakliczkij from the National School of Justice gave also a welcome speech.

The moderator of the webinar was Professor Mykhaylo Shepitko, member of the Executive Board of the Project Sunflowers, a professor in the Department of Criminal Law at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and a Leading Staff Researcher of Аcademician Stashis Scientific Research Institute for the Study of Crime Problems (Kharkiv, Ukraine). 

The first speech was given by Professor Michael Bazyler of the Fowler School of Law, Chapman University, California, who was focusing on how forced transfer of children is an act of genocide and talked about how Nuremberg prosecution of  German perpetrators for forced transfer of children in the RuSHA trial (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, the “Race and Settlement Main Office”) against the SS racial policies (officially, United States of America vs. Ulrich Greifelt, et al) established that kidnapping children was crime of genocide – and can also be classified as a crime against humanity. It was the eighth of the twelve trials held in Nuremberg by the U.S. authorities for Nazi war crimes after the end of the World War II. 

The next speaker was Oksana Senatorova, PhD, a founder and Director of the NGO “Centre for International Humanitarian Law and Transitional Justice” (CIHLTJ) and an Associate Professor of the International Law Department at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, who is also the co-founder of the Foundation Sunflowers and a member of the Law Commission of Ukraine under the President of Ukraine, a Coordinator of the Working Group on the Protection of Victims of Armed Conflict of the Interdepartmental Commission on Implementation of IHL in Ukraine, responsible for monitoring the current situation of relocating Ukrainian children who spoke about the factual situation of the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian citizens, giving particular attention the outline the legal regulation of the prohibition of deportation and its application in the context of this armed conflict; she also presented the role of the Russian leadership in the deportation of children and highlighted the Ukraine’s current actions in response to these deportations and the gaps in national legislation and practice, and conclude with recommendations.

The webinar was conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Ukrainian. Please, watch the abstract of the webinar.