Situation of Human Rights in the Temporarily Occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, Ukraine

A/RES/77/229View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 68c Human rights situations and reports of special rapporteurs and representatives, published in 2022.

What other versions does this mandate have?

2 versions · 2022–2023

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2023	A/RES/77/229	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine	5,567	54%Compare
2022	A/RES/76/179	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine	5,406	–

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

4 reports · 2022–2023

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2023	A/78/340	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/77/229
2023	A/HRC/53/64	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/77/229
2022	A/77/220	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/76/179
2022	A/HRC/50/65	Situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/76/179

What subjects does this mandate have?

9 subjects

Aggression Annexation of Territory Crimea (Ukraine)Human Rights Human Rights Monitoring Human Rights Violations Russian Federation Sevastopol (Ukraine)Ukraine

What’s in this document?

51 operative paragraphs

Deplores the failure of the Russian Federation to comply with the repeated requests and demands of the General Assembly, as well as with the orders of the International Court of Justice of 19 April 2017 on provisional measures in the case concerning the Application of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Ukraine v. Russian Federation), and of 16 March 2022 on provisional measures in the case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation);

Strongly condemns the continuing and total disregard by the Russian Federation for its obligations under international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, regarding its legal responsibility for the occupied territory, including the responsibility to respect Ukrainian law and the rights of all civilians;

Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter, and the use of Crimea for this aim and to support the attempted illegal annexation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions;

Demands that the Russian Federation immediately cease its aggression against Ukraine and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders;

Condemns violations and abuses of human rights law and international humanitarian law perpetrated by the Russian occupying authorities and entailing discrimination against the residents of the temporarily occupied Crimea, including Crimean Tatars, as well as Ukrainians and persons belonging to other ethnic and religious groups;

Demands that the Russian Federation respect obligations under international law with regard to respecting the laws in force in Crimea prior to occupation;

Urges the Russian Federation:

To uphold all of its obligations under applicable international law;

To fully and immediately comply with the orders of the International Court of Justice of 19 April 2017 and of 16 March 2022;

To take all measures necessary to bring an immediate end to all violations and abuses of human rights law and violations of international humanitarian law against residents of the temporarily occupied Crimea, in particular reported discriminatory measures and practices, arbitrary detentions and arrests, violations and abuses within the framework of the filtration procedures, enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, including to compel apprehended persons to self-incriminate or “cooperate” with law enforcement, ensure fair trial, revoke all discriminatory legislation and hold accountable those responsible for those violations and abuses by ensuring the independent, impartial and effective investigation of all allegations;

To refrain from arresting or prosecuting Crimean residents for non-criminal acts committed or opinions expressed, including in social media comments or posts, and release all Crimean residents who have been arrested or imprisoned for such acts;

To respect the laws in force in Ukraine, repeal laws unlawfully imposed in Crimea by the Russian Federation that allow for forced evictions and the confiscation of private property, including land in Crimea, in violation of applicable international law, and respect the property rights of all former owners affected by previous confiscations;

To immediately release and allow the return to Ukraine, without preconditions, of Ukrainian citizens who were unlawfully detained, as well as those transferred or deported across internationally recognized borders from Crimea to the Russian Federation;

To disclose the number and identity of individuals deported from Crimea to the Russian Federation to serve criminal sentences and take immediate action to allow the voluntary return of such individuals to Crimea;

To end the practice of placing detainees in solitary confinement cells as a method of intimidation;

To monitor and accommodate the medical needs of all Ukrainian citizens unlawfully detained for the exercise of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including political prisoners, in Crimea and the Russian Federation and allow the monitoring of those detainees’ state of health and conditions of detention by independent international monitors and physicians from reputable international health organizations, including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and investigate effectively all deaths in detention;

To uphold the rights, in accordance with international law and until their release, of Ukrainian prisoners and detainees in Crimea and in the Russian Federation, including those on hunger strike, and encourages it to respect the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules)¹⁸ and the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules);¹⁹

¹⁸Resolution 70/175, annex.

¹⁹Resolution 65/229, annex.

To address ongoing impunity and ensure that those found to be responsible for violations and abuses of human rights law and violations of international humanitarian law are held accountable before an independent judiciary;

To create and maintain a safe and enabling environment for journalists and media workers and citizen journalists, human rights defenders and defence lawyers to perform their work independently and without undue interference in Crimea, including by refraining from travel bans, deportations, arbitrary arrests, detention and prosecution, and other restrictions on the enjoyment of their rights;

To respect, protect and fulfil freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers, enable a safe and enabling environment for independent media pluralism and ensure a safe and enabling environment for civil society organizations;

To respect freedom of opinion, association and peaceful assembly without any restrictions other than those permissible under international law, and freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief, without discrimination on any grounds, to lift discriminatory regulatory barriers prohibiting or limiting the activities of religious groups in Crimea, including but not limited to parishioners of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Muslim Crimean Tatars and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and to permit unimpeded access, without any undue restrictions, to places of worship as well as gatherings for prayer and other religious practices;

To restore enjoyment of the rights of all individuals, without any discrimination based on origin or religion or belief, revoke the decisions that banned cultural and religious institutions, non-governmental organizations, human rights organizations and media outlets and restore enjoyment of the rights of individuals belonging to ethnic communities in temporarily occupied Crimea, in particular ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, including the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community;

To respect, protect and fulfil the right to be free from arbitrary or unlawful interference with a person’s privacy, family, home or correspondence;

To ensure that the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of association can be exercised by all Crimean residents in any form, including single-person pickets, without any restrictions other than those permissible under international law, including international human rights law, and without discrimination on any grounds, and to end the practices of abusing requirements of prior authorization for peaceful assemblies and issuing warnings or threats to potential participants in those assemblies;

To refrain from criminalizing the rights to hold opinions without interference and to freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly and quash all penalties imposed on Crimean residents for expressing dissenting views, including regarding the status of temporarily occupied Crimea and the unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine;

To ensure the availability of education in the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages, and stop the blocking of access to Ukrainian education;

To respect the rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, revoke immediately the decision declaring the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People an extremist organization and banning its activities, repeal the decision banning leaders of the Mejlis from entering Crimea, repeal the sentences, including in absentia, against Crimean Tatars and their leaders and immediately release those arbitrarily detained, including the leaders of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, and refrain from maintaining or imposing limitations on the ability of the Crimean Tatars to conserve their representative institutions;

To stop the illegal drafting and mobilization of Crimean residents into the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, stop pressure aimed at compelling Crimean residents to serve in the armed or auxiliary forces of the Russian Federation, as well as using propaganda, also targeted at children and through the education system, and ensure strict compliance with its international obligations as an occupying Power;

To end also the practice of criminal prosecution of inhabitants who resist conscription and mobilization into the armed or auxiliary forces of the Russian Federation;

To end the practice of deporting Ukrainian citizens from Crimea for not taking Russian citizenship, stop transferring its own civilian population to Crimea and end the practice of encouraging such transfers;

To immediately and unconditionally reverse the decision to simplify the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for Ukrainian orphans or children left without parental care;

To provide to the relevant United Nations bodies and international organizations full information on Ukraine’s children forcibly transferred or deported to the Russian Federation, including on those children who were subsequently adopted or transferred to foster families, in order to ensure that these children are provided with protection and care in accordance with international law;

To cease forcible transfers or deportation of Ukraine’s children to the Russian Federation and take all necessary steps with a view to their safe return and family reunification in line with the best interests of the child and in accordance with international law;

To cooperate fully and immediately with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, which must have safe, secure and unhindered access to the entire territory of Ukraine, including the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and the Council of Europe on the situation of human rights in Crimea;

To create the conditions, as well as provide the means, to allow for the voluntary, safe, dignified and unhindered return to their homes of all internally displaced persons and refugees affected by the temporary occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation;

To stop the policy of forcibly changing the demographic, including ethnic, composition of the population and take the necessary measures aimed at limiting the free migration of citizens of the Russian Federation to Crimea;

To ensure compliance with obligations under international law, including humanitarian law and the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict,²⁰ regarding the preservation of monuments of the cultural heritage of Ukraine in Crimea, in particular regarding the Khan Palace in Bakhchysarai and the monument “The ancient city of Chersonese and its Chora”, to prevent and stop reported illegal archaeological excavations on the territory of the Crimean peninsula, and the illicit transfer of cultural property of Ukraine outside the territory of Ukraine;

²⁰United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 249, No. 3511.

Calls upon the Russian Federation to address the substantive concerns and all recommendations highlighted in the reports of the Secretary-General and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, as well as previous relevant recommendations from reports on the situation of human rights in Ukraine by the Office of the High Commissioner based on the work of the United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine established to prevent further deterioration of human rights in Crimea;

Supports the efforts of Ukraine to maintain economic, financial, political, social, informational, cultural and other ties with its citizens in Crimea in order to facilitate their access to democratic processes, economic opportunities and objective information;

Calls upon all international organizations and specialized agencies of the United Nations system, when referring to Crimea in their official documents, communications, publications, information and reports, including with regard to statistical data of the Russian Federation or provided by the Russian Federation, as well as those placed or used on official United Nations Internet resources and platforms, to refer to “the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation”, and to refer to bodies of the Russian Federation and their representatives in Crimea as “occupying authorities of the Russian Federation”, and encourages all States and other international organizations to do the same;

Calls upon Member States to support human rights defenders in Crimea and across Ukraine and to continue advocacy for the respect of human rights, including by condemning the violations committed by the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied Crimea at bilateral and multilateral forums;

Also calls upon Member States to engage constructively in concerted efforts, including within international frameworks and the International Crimea Platform, aimed at improving the human rights situation in the occupied peninsula, as well as to continue to use all diplomatic means to press and urge the Russian Federation to comply with its obligations under international human rights law and as an occupying Power under international humanitarian law and to grant unimpeded access to Crimea for established regional and international human rights monitoring mechanisms, in particular the human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine;

Condemns all attempts by the Russian Federation to legitimize or normalize its attempted illegal annexation of Crimea and other territories of Ukraine, including the automatic imposition of citizenship of the Russian Federation, illegal election campaigns and voting, population census, forcible change of the demographic structure of the population and suppression of national identity;

Calls upon the international community to continue to support the work of the United Nations to uphold international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the temporarily occupied Crimea and other territories of Ukraine under temporary military control by the Russian Federation;

Requests the Secretary-General to continue to seek ways and means, including through consultations with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant regional organizations, to ensure safe and unfettered access to Crimea and other territories of Ukraine temporarily controlled by the Russian Federation by established regional and international human rights monitoring mechanisms, in particular the United Nations human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, to enable them to carry out their mandates;

Urges the Russian Federation to ensure the proper and unimpeded access of international human rights monitoring missions and human rights non-governmental organizations to the temporarily occupied Crimea and other territories of Ukraine temporarily controlled by the Russian Federation, including all places where persons may be deprived of their liberty, recognizing that the international presence and monitoring of compliance with international human rights law and international humanitarian law are of paramount importance in preventing further deterioration of the situation;

Decides to include the item entitled “The situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine” in the agenda of the General Assembly until the violations committed as a result of foreign occupation and control of parts of the territory of Ukraine are duly dealt with and the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders is fully restored;

Requests the Secretary-General to remain actively seized of the matter and to take all steps necessary, including within the Secretariat, to ensure the full and effective coordination of all United Nations bodies with regard to the implementation of the present resolution;

Also requests the Secretary-General to continue to provide his good offices and pursue his discussions relating to the matter, involving all relevant stakeholders and including the concerns addressed in the present resolution;

Further requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session on the progress made in the implementation of all provisions of the present resolution, including options and recommendations to improve its implementation, and to submit for consideration an interim report to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-third session, to be followed by an interactive dialogue, in accordance with Council resolution 47/22 of 13 July 2021;²¹

²¹See Official Records of the General Assembly, Seventy-sixth Session, Supplement No. 53 (A/76/53), chap. VII, sect. A.

Decides to continue its consideration of the matter at its seventy-eighth session under the item entitled “Promotion and protection of human rights”.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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