About the project
An online library of international case-law and of foreign national courts, in the proceedings brought by Ukraine and by foreign States to hold Russia accountable for violations committed during the war against Ukraine.
The Library of Accountability and Justice for Ukraine ‘NaSvitlo’ is an online collection of international practice and of the practice of foreign courts concerned with accountability for violations of international law committed in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The platform brings together, in one place, the analysis of decisions and of other materials from those proceedings, and makes them available for systematic search, research and analysis.
The unlawful character of Russia’s actions was recognized as early as 2014: the resolution ‘Territorial integrity of Ukraine’, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 27 March 2014, underscored the illegality of the ‘referendum’ in Crimea and called upon all States, international organizations, and specialized agencies not to recognize any alteration of its status.
NaSvitlo is conceived not merely as an archive of court decisions but as an open resource for researchers, practising lawyers, students, civil society and everyone working on accountability, justice and the rule of law in the context of the war against Ukraine.
The UN General Assembly adopts the resolution ‘Territorial integrity of Ukraine’A/RES/68/262
Why this library
Russia’s war against Ukraine set the law a task of extraordinary scale: to secure accountability for numerous violations of international law, to protect the rights of those harmed, and to build the legal preconditions for restoring justice. The answer has been a wide range of international and national legal mechanisms, and the result is a substantial and constantly growing body of case-law.
The forums in the library
- International Court of JusticeICJ
- European Court of Human RightsECtHR
- International Criminal CourtICC
- International Tribunal for the Law of the SeaITLOS
- Permanent Court of ArbitrationPCA
- Foreign national courts–
That practice, however, is scattered across jurisdictions, institutions and information resources. This makes it harder to follow cases systematically, to understand how the different legal mechanisms relate to one another, and to use what they have established.
The platform is meant not merely to hold information about individual cases but to help a reader see the wider picture: how a multi-level system of accountability and justice is taking shape, across jurisdictions and legal mechanisms, in answer to the war against Ukraine.
Part of a wider mission
The making of NaSvitlo is part of a wider mission of the Faculty of Law of the Ukrainian Catholic University and of the Louis Sohn Research Centre – to uphold the value of human dignity, the rule of law and human rights, and to strengthen the part the academic community plays in answering the social and legal challenges of the war.
Through research, education and open access to legal knowledge we seek to help make sense of how the law can serve as an instrument for protecting the person, establishing accountability and restoring justice.
The Louis Sohn Research Centre at the UCU Faculty of Law is an expert platform for researching, making sense of and answering the legal challenges caused by the war and by Ukraine’s post-war recovery. The Centre grew out of a conviction that the law cannot stay silent where justice and human dignity are violated.
The Centre joins scholarly analysis to practical legal work: it conducts research, holds public debate, and supports the professional development of lawyers willing to take on the hardest questions of their time. This library is one of those answers.
The Louis Sohn CentreThe Centre’s mission
- 01Developing Ukraine’s national law on the foundations of the rule of law, human rights and constitutional democracy
- 02Expert assessment of the present state of international law and of the challenges thrown up by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine
- 03Shaping public policy that is well-founded and rooted in values
- 04Building a community of lawyers engaged in forming legal answers to the challenges of the war and to difficult social change
The university’s mission is service to society. For the Faculty of Law that service lies not only in bringing up a new generation of lawyers, but in taking part in the transformation of society itself. The Research Centre is the expert forum, the place where legal answers to the challenges of the war will be formed and thought through.
Who works on this
The team pageProject Coordinator
- Olha Denkovych
Component Leads
- Taras Leshkovych
- Marta-Mariia Yatsynina
Research Assistants
- Mariia Hrytsyshyn
- Iryna Panteleimoniuk
Technical Experts
- Viola Martyniuk
- Andrii Udovychenko
Write to us
If you have spotted an error in a summary, or know of a proceeding that is missing, write to us.