Ukraine as a Catalyst for Human Rights Collaboration: A Crucial Matter in a Cruel Conflict

As the escalating war between Ukraine and Russia has entered its fourth year of full-scale invasion, human rights are continuously violated, posing unceasing challenges in safeguarding the rights of everyone involved. At Lund University, the Human Rights Profile Area highlights important aspects of human rights in relation to the Ukraine war through a symposium. 

Human rights as a foundational part of discussing the Ukraine war

Human Rights research and collaboration in relation to the Ukraine conflict are very important. Lena Halldenius speaks of a current global securitisation of politics. ”War is spoken of from a security perspective today”, she says. “We see a political discourse where human rights become conditioned and subordinated to questions of security. Which is ill advised, because what kind of security agenda are we left with if that agenda does not adhere to or understand how human rights are impacted?”

Halldenius argues that Human Rights research can direct focus back to the questions of human rights, to combat a dangerous trivialisation of the matter. But Human Rights research can also constitute a critical eye on how security is allowed to trump other concerns. ”Human rights issues are very, very, obvious on the ground in Ukraine. But for those standing on the outskirts and looking in, it is easy to focus on other things. Security is an important subject, but it should not overshadow issues which victims of war live through daily.”

Karol Nowak, associate professor in Law and participant of the symposium, agrees. ”Human rights are not forgotten in the Ukraine war, but they become a little obscured outside of Ukraine. The fact that people are hurting and dying becomes a bit transactional in the general debate, despite human rights being a very visible concern for those actually in Ukraine”, he says. “But war crimes are being documented in Ukraine in a way we usually don’t see in conflicts, and that documentation will be used as grounds to prosecute people later. In that sense, human rights become the very foundation for justice in Ukraine.”

Halldenius sees a worrying trend of weakening respect for human rights and human rights systems. The authoritarian turn global politics has taken has started to disintegrate the rule-based order built on human rights, and she expresses that there is reason to worry if we are moving towards a power based order instead.

Without a Human Rights agenda, we enter a state of “might is right” instead of working towards delimiting human suffering, Nowak says. A Human Rights research agenda puts a framework around human rights and make them workable - they constitute a platform to lift human rights beyond the agreement “it’s horrible when people suffer”. That agreement in itself does not lead anywhere, but Human Rights studies develop it into something more concrete.

“We do have a way of working with and holding people accountable for the crimes they are committing on the battlefield”, says Nowak. “It’s not just wishful thinking, but we have a ground for liability due to the framework Human Rights studies create. Symposia like these are very important to highlight that this framework does exist and is way of working with this in a concrete way.” 

A symposium to create a dialouge

As snowdrops and crocuses began to bloom in the trenches outside Lund University, important research was conducted inside. The full-day symposium involved researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and generated fruitful conversations. Presentations were mixed with discussions on four topics: Access to justice, Disability rights, Conflict and disasters, and Good governance and business practices. 

“We could definitely have had more topics – the field is impossibly large and all topics are intertwined”, says Nowak. “But it needs to be delimited somehow, and these delimitations worked very well. Had the organisers taken on more topics, it would have been too much and unmanageable for a one-day symposium.”

Halldenius motivates the choice of categories with two factors.

“We wanted to discuss the war in a different sense than usually done”, she says. “The Ukraine conflict shows clearly how human rights are violated in different aspects in war. People who are already at risk of having their rights infringed, such as the disabled, becomes more affected in times of war. We wanted to put our focus there, instead of pointing towards the more ‘obvious’ things; such as war in itself being illegal and a violation of human rights.”

“The other reason behind the choice of these categories was that we wanted to align the discussion to the research already being done at the University. Those who have not studied Ukraine at all could still attend and contribute in a fruitful manner.”

But of course, other topics would have been interesting to explore. “The disastrous climate and environmental impact on war could be a topic to lift for the future. Another topic could be gender. Situations of war tend to aggravate already existing gender norms”, says Halldenius and points toward a problem lifted by both Halldenius and Nowak; returning Ukrainian war veterans.

Returning war veterans in Ukraine are often greeted as heroes, but they return ridden with PTSD. Their PTSD might make them violent and unstable, subjecting their families to danger. There is then sexual and gendered violence in the aftermath of the very war fought on the ground. But it’s not easy to hold these war veterans accountable – they did not ask for their PTSD, and being treated as heroes does not make it easier to point out how dangerous they are. They are heroes, victims, and perpetrators all at once, and constitute a ripple effect of infringed human rights outside the battle zone. “There are victims beyond those that get a bomb in their head”, says Nowak and points to ongoing dialogues, enabled by symposia like Ukraine as a Catalyst for Human Rights Dialogue, as very important to lift these kinds of non-obvious human rights issues.

Human rights studied or Human Rights studies? Academising human rights

Halldenius lifts the interdisciplinarity of Human Rights research as important. “People who hear about human rights usually thinks it’s about law or ethical principles”, she says. “Which it of course is, but we are focusing on the human rights challenges. Which are they? What kind of competences do we need to address them? With that perspective, it becomes obvious that it is not only about law or ethics”, argues Halldenius. “Rather than focusing on what human rights is, we look at what human rights do and how they can be threatened. If we look at the Ukraine war like that, we realise that human rights not only need lawyers and philosophers, but also engineers, climate scientists, healthcare staff and so on. That is the lens and the perspective that we bring to human rights and Human Rights research.”