Issue: № 3, 2025
Doi: https://doi.org/10.37634/efp.2025.3.22
The paper is devoted to the topical issues of combating war crimes in the context of the provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and its Additional Protocols. The practical determinant of the study is the need to ensure counteraction to war crimes in the sense of conventional norms, which arose as a result of Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine. The paper analyses the conventional norms, the norms of the special part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and the case law of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The paper proposes a number of practical steps at the international and national levels to combat war crimes within the meaning of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The згкзщіу ща еру paper is to develop law enforcement approaches to the provisions of the Geneva Convention and modernising Ukraine's national legislation on its basis. The author examines the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine with a view to understanding the correlation between constitutional norms and provisions of the Convention. The author also examines the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the light of modernisation of national criminal legislation in accordance with the content of the Convention. The author makes specific proposals for improving the criminal legislation of Ukraine in order to fully comply with the Convention. Proposals are made to improve the Convention itself based on practical challenges with an emphasis on the effectiveness of the international human rights mechanism. It is noted that today the effectiveness of the conventional norms requires the formation of procedural mechanisms for influencing the States which are parties to military conflicts.
Keywords : war crimes, Geneva Convention, fundamental human rights, peacebuilding
References:
1. Constitution of Ukraine. 28.06.1996 №254k/96-VR. Bulletin of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (VVR). 1996. № 30. Art. 141. (in Ukrainian).
2. Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Decision of 22.09.2005 № 5-rp/2005 URL: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/v005p710-05#Text (in Ukrainian).
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