 Hello everyone. I just probably have to introduce a minor correction. I'm a visiting professional with the International Criminal Court and today I will speak about my legal practice as a Ukrainian lawyer in Ukraine on international humanitarian and criminal law issues. I should make a disclaimer that surely it's a very challenging thing to practice the armed conflict issues in your own country. I'm trying to be as impartial as possible, but if you notice any bias from me as a Ukrainian lawyer practicing in Ukrainian, please do speak up and I will be very very happy to address them. My presentation is called Do No Harm. The book by a celebrated British neurosurgeon Henry March was called, is called Do No Harm and he who's also practicing a surgery in Ukraine says that his Ukrainian colleagues often suffer from an unjustified surgical activism when they are too active and too willing to operate in the cases which are unoperatable, which might be only aggravated by the intervention. And unfortunately sometimes it also happens with the civil society in Ukraine because having faced an armed conflict, an issue the Ukrainians have not predicted nor were quite ready to tackle just gave rise to many challenges, many challenges. So on the first slide you can see the Maidan Square. Basically, this is the central key of where the Revolution of Dignity started in 2013. It culminated in mass shootings of the protesters and eventually the occupation of Crimea followed and the armed conflict in Donbas in eastern region of the country with the pro-Russian proxies who are allegedly supported by Russia. Here you can see this neurosurgeon Henry March also in Maidan Square who commented on this unjustified activism of the Ukrainians. But is it really unjustified? The case of emergency followed in the legal domain in such a manner. Ukraine could not investigate or prosecute the alleged perpetrators of the Maidan crimes or of the crimes which are committed in Crimea and in Donbas. Because first, many alleged perpetrators have left the country to Russia or elsewhere. So they're not there physically and second, there are certain other expert limitations because surely the domestic prosecutors, judges have not dealt with the law of armed conflict. So the international criminal court became the first option, the primary and evident option to pursue the individual criminal responsibility of those allegedly responsible for the grave violations in the country. Ukraine signed the Rome Statute in the 2000, but it did not ratify the statute due to some constitutional limitations. So what the country did in 2014 and 15, the country recognized the ad hoc basically jurisdiction of the court under article 12.3 of the Rome Statute. So basically Ukraine has invited the Rome Statute to step in and look at the situation in the country. At the moment, the prosecutor of the international criminal court is doing a preliminary examination of the situation in the country. So what does it mean? It means that it's not a full-scale investigation yet. So currently the office of the prosecutor is examining whether there is a reasonable basis to believe that the crimes following within the jurisdiction of the court, namely the war crimes and crimes against humanity in case of Ukraine, have been committed. And if the prosecutor is satisfied with that, she will proceed with a full-scale investigation. And to catalyze this investigation and to catalyze justice for the country, the civil society has stepped in. I will address the five principle innovations or where the Ukrainian civil society has helped to bring more justice to the victims of the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. And I should explain that by the civil society, I mean the practicing lawyers, the NGOs, the media and the academia. So the first thing is that the growing role of domestic NGOs in documenting the war crimes and submitting the evidence to the international criminal court. Both the well-established NGOs like the Helsinki Human Rights Union and the newly established NGOs like the Regional Center for Human Rights have been actually in the avant-garde. They were in the front even before the prosecutors' offices, pointing at the violations first, committed by all sides to the conflict and second, at the violations that were not on the radar of the state authorities yet. For example, the Ukrainian NGOs were first to look at violations against cultural property in occupied Crimea, and the prosecutors' general's office was not looking at that crime at the time. But as the evidence was collected, the prosecutors' offices were sure that indeed it was the case, it was a violation, and they started their own cases. So we can definitely see that the domestic NGOs and human rights in Ukraine have impacted the case selection in domestic proceedings. Second, there has been the unprecedented cooperation between NGOs and traditionally reserved state authorities. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Soviet and post-Soviet prosecutorial and law enforcement system, but I presume you can understand that these institutions have been very male-dominated, very close to external consultancy and very reserved in their reporting. But understanding the limitations of their expertise, the state security offices, the prosecutor general's office, the MPs, the government, the Ministry of Justice have become open to the consultancy from domestic and foreign NGOs. What has that changed? That has changed the attitude that we can now see the press events from the prosecutor general of Ukraine, who not only admits but really celebrates the cooperation with NGOs. This has never been the case on the post-Soviet space. Very recently, just in February, the prosecutor general announced quite proudly that together with domestic NGOs, they submitted a new communication to the International Criminal Court on the appropriation of property in occupied Crimea. So we can see that the NGO sector is more accepted and recognized by the state sector and this is very important. Basically, this is the third point that I would like to address. This is the growing state openness to the consultancy not only from domestic actors, but also from external actors. The company that I work for is run by a British barrister and American attorney and one could never expect state Ukrainian prosecutor's office being open to the consultancy from a British barrister. But actually, this is what they're currently doing. They do receive the recommendations. They do invite the practice and international lawyers to train the Ukrainian judiciary, the newly formed Supreme Court of Ukraine on IHL and on ICL because as the judges were not really familiar with the International Humanitarian Law, some war crimes proceedings were conducted in Ukraine domestically were criticized for not fully meeting the International Humanitarian Law requirements. So there is this openness to the current training of new judiciary in Ukraine by including foreign experts. Forced we're speaking about the enhanced legal training of the military. As you know, the International Criminal Court looks into the situation as a whole, not just at the violations committed by a one party to a conflict. So certainly, the Ukrainians or the government are interested to ensure that their military, their servicemen are as knowledgeable about IHL as possible because this is their primary protection. Ensuring that they are not committing the war crimes. Ensuring that the shelling they do complies with the principles of distinction and other IHL standards. So we've also currently experienced in this huge civil society participation in training of the military. Again, this is something that could never happen even a couple of years ago because the military has traditionally been in the Soviet Union and in the post-Soviet countries, a very closed traditional and reserved area close to the foreign consultancy. And fifth, the civil society, namely Amnesty International, Global Rights Compliance, my private, basically, law company, local NGOs and academia are contributing greatly to amending the domestic criminal legislation The road-statute crimes, the war crimes and crimes against humanity have not been properly incorporated into domestic law in Ukraine, not only in Ukraine, also in Georgian, in Moldova Georgians also had to amend their domestic legislation when there aren't conflict with Russia happened. So the principle flaws that the civil society has helped to eradicate from domestic law as follows. First, all the majority of the war crimes incorporated in the road-statute are in the new draft law amending the criminal code of Ukraine. Second, the penalties, the approach to punishment is also incorporated properly because currently there is this balance between the penalty options in the Ukrainian criminal code. For instance, it provides an option of only 10 to 15 imprisonment for a war crime or a life imprisonment. So we see a clear disproportionate approach to punishing war criminals. This has been corrected. Also, we are installing, we are adding new crimes such as the crime of enslavement of persecution and enforced disappearance. These crimes have not been recognised by the Soviets and they have not been recognised in the independent post-Soviet states, but currently we see that the armed conflicts demand that they be in domestic legislation. So this is something that the civil society also is reassuring the domestic authorities to change and to implement. Thank you. There have been also complications. As I'm saying, Dr. Marsh said that the involvement can also be sometimes harmful. For instance, the mass media have provided their own version of international law. They raise the unjustified expectations. For example, many mass media are not knowledgeable about international law, claim that the ICC will definitely adjudicate the modern crimes, the shootings in the central square of Kiev, not understanding the limitations that the widespread and systematic criteria require by the ICC. Surely they raise the unjustified expectations from the victims and they such unjustified reports by the media, they create the tension within the society when they don't receive the judgment on which they expect it, but they couldn't expect it because the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the court did not allow for it. And unfortunately, not all media explain that. Although there is a legal activism concerning, for instance, trials and absentia, people want to prosecute so much that they have adopted the authorities to meet the public demand, adopted the amendments on the trials and absentia, which don't really meet the fair trial standards of the European Court of Human Rights, of notifying a waiver, of a right to retrial. And also there is a huge lack of scholarly voice. The Ukrainians don't really participate in forming the discourse, the narration about what's happening in the country. All the discourse is usually led by Western lawyers. So this is also my appeal to my colleagues in Ukraine, and I also say that in Ukraine, that you should contribute, you should provide your own vision to make this international law truly international. But there are more voices now. I'm happy to speak to you now and thank you for your attention.