 I'll leave it with you, Mariana, to share the recording and excellent, thanks so much. Perfect. And then, yeah, so my name is Martina Caterina, for those who don't know me, I'm the chair of the task team on law and policy of the global protection cluster with the UNICEF in Geneva. As you know, over the past couple of years, the task team has started this project on legal aid in humanitarian settings and the webinar today is part of this broader initiatives. But for today, actually, our main facilitator will be Paola Barsanti, the fantastic consultant that has been working with us for the past year, helping us with this work. So we just leave the floor to you, Paola, and looking forward to hear from our participants and speakers. Thanks. Thank you so much, Martina. And thank you to all of you who are already participating in today's webinar. We have many who are still joining. Thank you. Thank you so much for making the time to participate. And thank you for the great speakers that have on top of their responsibility also taken the time to prepare their presentation today. We are just in terms of logistics, Martina, if it's possible to mute the microphone so that the speakers can concentrate and focus on the intervention. If you have any questions to the speakers, we will have a final section on question and answer, but you can also write your question into the chat. Martina will make sure to organize the conversation in the chat as well. So we are too many to do a round the table and introduce ourselves. But I just wanted to let you know that this event really brings together expert and practitioners on legal aid and access to justice from many countries around the world, in particular countries in crisis and monetarian context, from a variety of organizations and from a variety of sectors. We have representatives from UN agencies, colleagues from UNDP, UNITCR, UNODC, IUM, just to mention some. We have colleagues from international INGO who focus on protection, human rights, access to justice and legal aid, such as the RC, NRC, IRC. We also have professors and academia representatives. And thanks for Belfast colleagues for joining today as this workshop is a follow up to the last meeting of the task team on law and policy on reparations that you facilitated. And we have also a broad range of representatives from donors. And last but not least, we have representatives from national civil society who will actually share their views and their knowledge on the ground during the presentation. As mentioned last week during the celebration of 10 years from the adoption of the UN principles and guidelines on legal aid in criminal matters, we really hope that this webinar contributes to create synergies among practitioners on access to justice and legal aid that are focusing their work on development, humanitarian, peace and human rights sphere. As mentioned by Martina at the beginning, this webinar is framed within a broader project led by the global protection cluster task team on law and policy legal aid in crisis settings. Great if you can share the link to the project deliverables that we aim at achieving in 2022. If you're more interested in receiving more detailed information on the projects and in particular the toolkit and knowledge that was developed by the legal aid task force within the legal aid, the legal task team on law and policy, we will be happy to share with you further information. The project focused in particular on developing a set of tools to enhance collective and collaborative analysis of legal aid needs and legal aid and access to justice landscape. Now this event today will focus on the role of legal aid in reparation context and in particular is the first one in a series of webinars aimed at collecting good practices on legal aid in crisis settings. We will look at legal aid in reparation context through three thematic lenses which you can see on the slide. So the speakers today will focus their intervention on good practices and lessons learned of legal aid policies and program by looking at three aspects. The first one weighs in and initiative to enhance synergies between development to humanitarian human rights and peace actors in the design and implementation of access to justice and legal aid intervention. The second one will look at partnership with the legal aid national actors meaning civil society organization but also private sector and duty bearers at national and the local level. And the third aspect will focus on the design and implementation of intervention aimed at addressing the needs of hard to reach population. Let's look at the agenda for today. Mariana if you can pass to the next slide. So last year we conducted a survey on legal aid in crisis settings with more than 100 participants from more than 35 countries in crisis settings and we chose those aspects to look at based on the field perspective. Also the selection of the case studies today were actually chosen following the field call from last year which is Colombia and Ukraine because they represent in different ways a laboratory where legal aid programs are designed and implemented in repolition context. As you can see from the agenda we will have representatives from UNDP, UNITCR, the protection cluster and INGO and national civil society organization on the two countries and after the presentation we will have a section on question and answers. So without further delay I will leave the floor to Maria Fernanda Jaramillo Pinto on NRC and their experiences on legal aid and restitution of collective rent rights of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities. Thank you Maria. Hello to everyone my name is Maria Fernanda. I am the Information Counseling and Legal Assistant in one of the areas here in Colombia specifically in the Pacific Coast where we have specific collective communities especially indigenous and Afro-Colombians. So today I'm going to talk about the restitution of collective land and at the beginning I am going to talk about the background about what we are doing in ICLA here and the focus of restitution of collective land and at the end I am going to share some good practice and let's unlearn it. Next please. So Colombia has offered the effects of the internal armed conflict. We have around over nine million of people that they have been included as victims in the register of victims and more than seven million of people they have been affected by displacement. Also in Colombia we have a very long history of laws, public policy and jurisprudence that have been focused in the attention and the reparation of victims and actually we have a specific public institution that is responsible for the reparation and the attention of the victims that the name is the victim unit. But also most of the public institutions of the state they have at least one responsible one obligation to respond to at least the first stage of the emergencies when the people is displaced. So there is a lot of obligation in different kind of institution not just in the victim unit. We also in the context of Colombia we have the recognition of collective territories and the self-government of ethnic communities. That means that the Afro-Colombians and the indigenous communities they have the right to have collective land but also to have their own or self-government. But we have these communities most of them are located in hard to reach areas and they have low capacity to compliance to the state. We also have some institutions that they are responsible to access to land specifically the national land agency but also we have a specific institution that they are responsible for their restitution because there is a high level of people and communities that they lost the land because of the displacement and this institution is the responsible of the administrative process to the people be possible that they go back to their land and continue their life there. We also there is a continuity of the armed conflict so it's very difficult to talk to reparation with the conflict is actually a reality that is not over and also we have a long and complex legal reparation process so we are talking about maybe five years in the in some cases but in other cases we are talking around 20 years. Next please. So here in Colombia the team that is working with the legal assistant is the information consoling and legal assistant team. NRC in Colombia has been working for more than 34 32 years and we provide different kind of services we provide a legal assistant protection wash livelihoods and there is one that I am losing and education services. We provide in the legal services information consoling and legal assistant and we cover different thematics for example we are working in housing land and property access to essential services but we also facilitate the access to the register as a victim especially in those massive emergencies that they are related of displacement. We also have a very long and strong relationship with the communities because they are located in hard to reach areas and in most of the time they don't have access to different services but they also don't have a contact with public institutions or to other NGO so we have that strong relationships with those communities and we also have been working not just in the legal services we are we have been also working in some advocacy actions that help us to show what is going on in those cases and specifically what's going on in the lives of the people and in the communities that we are working in. We have been focused in especially in communities that they are vulnerable especially with indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that they have been affected especially the violence in Colombia but also the legal services we work with refugees, Venezuelans and host communities. Next please. So related to the support that we are giving to reparation of indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities we have at least one context that help us to do it and is that we have the chance to work with these communities related to returns and relocation of ethnic communities also to work in some legal actions related to access to land to land restitution and in some cases we have communities that they have their own title of land but they have overlapping so we have been using a basic methodology that at the beginning we start with especially with the community relationship there we do the trainings we do the characterization to see what's going on what are the principal problems that the community have and later with this characterization we decide which kind of legal service or legal strategy we can do with them but also we make people feel part of that strategy so at the end what we want is that the leaders they feel that at the end this legal action is a part of them so we become like their lawyers so we create together the best legal strategy and most of our cases have been focusing housing land and property and later we have some complementary actions in different sectors so when we are available by education, shelter, wash, livelihoods projects so we try to complement this kind of action and when they are they are related to legal assistance what we do is most the focus on essential services like education and health assistance we have been we have been having different kind of approach and we have something that is very important in Colombia that is we have a kind of constitutional action that you can ask for it when you have a violation of human and fundamental rights so that's the kind of action that we have been using in those cases and when you have you receive a negative a follow-up there is the possibility to ask for a revision of to the one of the highest court that is the constitutional court we have two cases one of an indigenous community and another of a for Colombian community that we it was possible that those cases and receive the review of the constitutional court so it's a good approach and also the partnership with a clinic legal clinics from the universities and the strategic litigation organization that help us to present Amicus Curai advocacy strategies to show and to manage the state response and also to strategic litigations developed with target communities next please so we consider that one of the good practices in those cases and in our experience is that they are a focus in right basic community basis and differential approach because we are working with this kind of communities and also that we have been very close to then we have been working to make a stronger the structure of the technical communities and also the collaboration with other NGO and other institutions that they they want to work in strategic litigation and and also the use of different kinds of advocacy strategies one of them is the use of video visual documentary and life histories about the communities where we are working but actually how their life is without the access to land or without the access to the reparation and some lesson learned and challenges we have to keep improving the coordination with development human rights and peace actors there is there is a lot of things that we could do in those cases and so definitely we should improve it and also the community intervention plans can be based in multi-stakeholders cooperations and also we should be assured that some plans from the community were included in the public policy or in some development process that they are part of the of the state and one of our biggest challenges and is that this kind of process they are long-term support and so we are talking maybe in in process around three or five years and we need the process we need the flexibility of donors that they actually they want to invest in this kind of process that they are long-term funding and at the end we consider that we have to incentivize strategic and high impact litigation in the humanitarian context and you are in our experience it has been very useful related to housing land and property but definitely the probably there is another kind of specific thematics where we should work in the reparational context thank you thank you Maria and without further delay the floor is yours Haydo from UNDP thanks oh good morning or afternoon first of all I'm sorry for the background noise I hope you can you can hear me well and I will try to be very brief this part of UNDP Colombia and I will focus on effective participation in victims in Colombia's special jurisdiction for peace and following in the previous presentation I will show how different transitional justice processes are are simultaneous in Colombia and I will focus on this example just to illustrate some of the work that we do in Colombia so first of all but very shortly our peace justice and reconciliation work is completely connected to the other areas of work of UNDP over to the reduction of private governance and sustainable development we understand that peace and justice ends themselves but also as means or enablers for development in the country then within this portfolio we work in different topics in conflict-sensitive area-based development in access to justice and human rights access to ordinary justice and human rights reintegration and reconciliation and crisis response and a legal program also in victims and transitional justice and this is where I will focus my representation then within these areas of work we have different programs regarding collective reparation to victims improved service delivery by transitional justice institutions historical memory and then I will also focus here on the support to victims organizations and civil society organizations in access and transitional justice so I want to I want to go into details here just to let you know that uh as as uh Simeone Anders previously mentioned there are there is a wide array of institutional arrangements and just legislation in Colombia and jurisprudence in Colombia regarding victims and reparation and transitional justice so what we were listening before was mostly related to the victims and land restitution act in 2011 and then afterwards there have been previous institutional arrangements and transition to justice in Colombia that have also created institutional architecture and afterwards after the final disagreement between the government and the FARC in 2016 there was the creation of the comprehensive system of truth justice reparation in non-recurrence that actually created a few additional institutions such as the truth commission the special jurisdiction for peace and the special unit for surge of missing persons and this is where I will focus now so regarding the special jurisdiction for peace and some context it was created to investigate clarify judge and punish the most serious crimes that occurred in Colombia during more than 50 years if we are in conflict it was created in well after the disagreement in 2016 it was created effectively in 2017 it will last for 15 years it's that can be extended to 20 at the moment there are more than there are over 13 thousand people that have voluntarily appeared and appeared before the special jurisdiction for peace and now they are defendants in the process most of them from previous FARC EP group some small percentage from before by public force and the remainants by state agents and social protest related accused to be it is it is conducted through different macro cases that analyze macro victimization so this is also another innovation it is not an individual analysis of criminality of crimes but the macro criminalization and the different political economy drivers that are behind these victimization some key aspects of the special jurisdiction for peace it is a national court with full jurisdictional functions coordinated it coordinates work with the truth commission and the search unit for missing persons and it actually applies or privileges to restorative sanctions for reparation to victims and reconciliation in different areas there are over 300 000 individual victims recognized 300 and then collected victims indigenous and african-ombians and there have been over 300 reports received by different groups to promote investigation in the special jurisdiction then and this is the central part of it what has been our approach to these and I will just mention a few things that we have worked specifically to foster participation of victims besides we have also worked from the institutional side strengthening the special jurisdiction for peace and other personal justice institutions but in this case we have privileged these few areas of work first the strengthening of an articulation with civil society organization for judicial representation of victims so these departs from the base that the state recognizes civil society organizations record on legal aid and human rights litigation and instead of replacing that track record for over 20 or 30 years the special jurisdiction for peace has designed a program that we co-implement to ensure that we liaise we create a network with 17 organizations to ensure that judicial representation legal assistance and psychosocial support is provided to the victims so we through this process there are over four thousand individual victims represented and over 300 collective victims represented that associates over 300 000 individuals then another area of work is the individual and collective protection of victims defendants and other participating parties the under I mean the base of these is that there are still personal and community security aspects of risks for participating in transitional justice mechanisms as we are amidst a persistent conflict and we try to ensure that we coordinate when we work together with the special jurisdiction for peace with local governments for articulation protection measures and we facilitate the risk analysis studies and then we facilitate implementation of protection measures many of those connect protection with livelihoods and other development aspects especially collective protection of groups and finally psychosocial support and logistic assistance for victims participation in public hearings and events of recognition of responsibilities and the base for this is that face-to-face engagement in the judicial process is essential for victims effective participation in these processes if they are not able to to go to public hearings if they are not able to attend events of recognition of responsibility there will be left outside the process and then the support to civil society organizations for advocacy and critical issues and I have here an example of sexual violence where we have a partner up with five civil society organizations feminist organizations and we would let organizations to advocate for the opening of the sexual violence case this is together also with other UN agencies in the country where we have a partner up to ensure that these aspects that have been critical in Colombia's conflict with Dawson is not left behind so this is basically what I wanted to share there are many other aspects of access to justice where we work also together with UNHCR and other agencies in the country but I hope this has been a little bit illustrative of the kind of approach we take to ensure legal assistance and effective participation thank you. Thank you Haido very very clear and thank you Maria I think that shows the complementarities between different approaches this different organization I kindly now give the floor to Adriana from UNHCR Colombia thank you. Thank you Paola it's really nice to meet you again and thank you Martina also for this invitation to participate in this webinar my name is Adriana Buchele and protection officer I work in the UNHCR office here in Colombia. UNHCR in Colombia has been since working here since 25 years ago working towards the protection of IDPs but also more recently towards the protection of persons that came from Venezuela refugees and migrants from Venezuela since seven years ago and my presentation is going to be very brief and considering that my previous colleagues have shown some of the main aspects of the context and the work that we are doing here in Colombia we have to say that we work together with NRCE as co-leaders of the protection cluster and also with UNDP since several years ago working towards solutions but also more recently as co-leaders of the recently created a steering group on solutions considering the protected situation of IDPs in Colombia thank you. As my colleagues were saying before the situation of IDPs in Colombia is very complex is a situation of a protected displacement but also a continuous displacement and confinement situations according to the victims unit registry we have now 8.3 IDPs registered in the official system and more than say 6.8 million of IDPs still needs humanitarian assistance or access to preparations so that means that we need to focus on of course in a solutions agenda and that's why we together with UNDP we are trying to reinforce our efforts towards this solutions agenda. I have said that we have a protected situation but we want to highlight the continuous situation of displacement considering the continuity of the armed conflict in the country. In 2022 164,000 newly displaced persons were affected by by armed conflict with a disproportionate impact on Afro and indigenous communities and despite the efforts to continue peace negotiations and the decision of this government to promote a scenario of negotiations with all parts of the of the conflict we are concerned about the new risk scenario and the conditions of security that would affect the the IDP population in the country. As my colleague from NRC was saying we have a very strong legal and public policy framework that is according with the guiding principle but the main challenge of course is the implementation of that public policies to promote the overcoming of the vulnerability generated with forced displacement. The victims law has a full recognition of IDPs as victims with rights to through justice and reparation rights but we have a very important budgetary restrictions to guarantee individual and collective reparations and of course one of the main constraints that we have is that the security conditions in several parts of the country are not guaranteed until the moment. We have a very important opportunity as a country with the Peace Accord signed by one with one of our main guerrillas in 2016 that allow us to create the or allow us to the country create the transitional justice mechanisms including the special jurisdictions of of peace and the truth commissions. We have to say that the IDPs are the 80% or more of the victims in the country so together with the NGOs the UN agencies we have to promote a better access of IDPs to those mechanisms. Next please. And regarding our work here in Colombia I have to we want to highlight our effort to promote access to justice through I have to say three kind of strategies. The first one is to promote a massive access to justice through a network of very legal clinics of the universities that annually attend to more than 18,000 persons attended by this by this network. Some of the main rights litigated include access to humanitarian assistance, registry health and education but of course also the possibility for IDPs to access to the process the complex the complex process of reparation for one side and the process of land restitution. The second kind of strategy is the support of NGOs or other legal partners such as the Fundación Pro Bono Foundation to promote access to justice to people located in hard to reach areas most of them rural areas including access to compensation for example to elderly IDP population that in this moment is prioritized by the government to access to reparation but they face a lot of situations that have a lot of problems in access to to to reparation. And the third strategy and regarding our role here in Colombia we provide technical assistance to the constitutional court as Haido was saying in 2004 we have a very important landmark decision by the constitutional court which declared the unconstitutional state of affairs regarding internet displacement since that moment until now the constitutional court is following the situation of internet displacement and we have promoted IDPs participation in specific hearings and before the constitutional court and it's thanks to this very important role of the court this follow-up mechanisms that has been created since almost 20 years ago that the court has ordered to several institutions how to act to promote their access in general to rights but also to clarify the specific rights to truth justice and reparations for IDPs. At the beginning since 20 years ago for example IDPs were not recognized as victims with rights to to reparation so for that reason we believe that there's very important this this particular role of the constitutional court. Next please. And in particular regarding the access to transitional justice mechanisms we have been working with the truth commission that it's mandate finalized last year specifically to focus on the investigation of displacement in border areas and the impact of displacement regarding order connection with exile and the transborder movements of IDPs between within countries. We promoted IDPs participation in this investigation and also the presentation of reports specific reports of IDPs to the truth commission and at the end the truth commission elaborated their final report last year including a special chapter of the impact of exile for the Colombian population. In the next step our main challenge is to promote the implementation of this truth commission recommendation and the second aspect that we have been working with this transitional justice mechanisms is with the specific jurisdiction of peace. We have been working together with HEP by it's a crime in Spanish towards the investigation of the internal displacement as a crime. Mainstreaming the internal displacement and in at least three macro cases that is being investigated by HEP until the moment the HEP decision is not to prioritize IDPs internal displacement investigation as one macro case but we have been working together in order to mainstream this investigation in these three macro cases in particular regarding the crimes committed by FARC, the main guerrilla that I mentioned before, the public forces responsibility and also mainstreaming the internal displacement crime in the cases of ethnic population in particular in one of the main departments affected by armed conflict that is Choco Department. Also we have been working with IDPs organization to present reports before the HEP and support this organization to participate in the public hearings that HEP is having across the country to receive these kind of reports. These are our strategies that we are working here. I was thinking at the beginning of the presentation and regarding the main objective of this webinar and the project that my colleagues are are doing what we would have done differently I think in 20 years ago and I have to say that perhaps a good idea would be have more information regarding the internal displacement consider as a crime not only as a humanitarian situation but also trying to promote more specific information to regarding the causes of displacement the main perpetrators of displacement in order to provide quality information to assure that this kind of transitional justice mechanisms have information regarding internal displacement and the second thing and we have been working on this is try to identify the main causes of displacement and as my colleagues were saying before land issues are very is one of the eight axis of the armed conflict here in Colombia. So as UNHCR we have been working since several years ago related regarding the access to land but also to protect legal protection of land the legal and the restitution of land and also and more recently regarding the formalization legalization of informal settlements considering that IDPs are located mostly in urban areas so that's it thank you so much. Thank you thank you Adriana and thank you colleagues from from Colombia. I was I was thinking about the seven minutes that time but I know that when when there is so much to learn it's difficult to squeeze in thank you so much for the reflections around around what could we as an international community could have done differently I think the access and production and analysis of data is definitely one of the recommendations also stemming from a recent discussion around access to justice and we hope that the legal aid analysis framework could actually also help looking at the origins of displacement and as you mentioned Adriana the cost of displacement with a focus on land I think we have also colleagues here from from the Syria response and other crises where land is in both a origin to the conflict and the consequences on displaced and conflict affected populations so thank you for those reflections colleagues from Colombia and let me give the floor to Jaroslava I hope I pronounced your name correctly from right to protection from Ukraine thank you so much Jaroslava over to you thank you thank you all I am Jaroslava I'm a strategic litigation lawyer of the right to protection and I would like to talk briefly about reparations in Ukraine legislative aspect and our experience legal aid in this context first of all I would like to note that nowadays after the full-scale suppression of Russia in February 2022 unfortunately there are no effective domestic remedies in Ukraine in the context of reparations in HLP cases housing land and property at the same time there are legal means used by Ukrainian lawyers since 2014 when Russia invaded the eastern part of Ukraine the first one is court mechanism it is lodging claims with Ukrainian courts against Ukraine and against Russia the second one is administrative mechanism it is laid in obtaining compensation under administrative procedure established by the Ukrainian government next please court mechanism in HLP cases against Ukraine the supreme court took the following position it awarded the plaintiffs with compensation for the state's failure to fulfill its positive obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights article one of article number one to the convention this right to peaceful possession property in particular the supreme court in its decisions noted that the positive obligations of the state according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights may include certain measures necessary to protect the right to property namely the state must provide in its legal system guarantees for the realization of the right to property and legal remedies by which the victim of interference with the stride can protect it in particular, particular, by claiming damages for any loss and take all appropriate measures to protect property within its jurisdiction and as a result the supreme court admitted the absence in the legislation of Ukraine of relevant provisions on compensation at the same time there are some shortcomings of that court mechanism in Ukraine because the sum of compensation which are usually from 600 euros to 3000 euros are granted by national courts for the absence of legal remedies at the domestic level and they usually are not equivalent to pecuniary losses of victims which usually estimated much higher also in 2022 the supreme court gave green light for domestic courts to consider cases against russian on the recovery compensation for damage for destroyed housing caused by russian aggression it concerns atlp cases but it's not limited to them the supreme court reached the following conclusion given to the fact that russia is an aggressor state which grossly violates the principles of international law and that is why it cannot claim immunity from prosecution in ukraine accordingly there is no need to receive the consent of russia to consider the case against it in the ukrainian court as of today there are a number of positive decisions of domestic courts against russia however there is very sufficient shortcoming because currently there is no mechanism for their enforcement the next one please so now i want to focus on our administrative mechanism it was created by the resolution of the cabinet administrators of ukraine you know and provides the administrative procedure of obtaining compensation for damage or ruined housing there are also a range of shortcomings of that mechanism in particular it provides payments maximum about nine thousand euros for ruined housing and approximately one thousand euros for damage housing usually these sums are not equivalent to pecuniary losses of victims which usually estimated much higher the above compensation is not enough to renovate housing in proper manner or rebuild it or to buy new housing for satisfactory quality taking into account costs on real estate property in ukraine and building materials but for example some of our beneficiaries of our organizations here are satisfied with that sums of compensation the next shortcoming is that compensation is provided to those victims who remained at the previous place of residence or within the relevant settlement so the internally displaced person are excluded from compensating it is sufficient disadvantage also compensation is provided to those victims whose own housing is located in the territories controlled by ukraine however a number of victims resided on the occupied territories and the last shortcoming is that the procedure envisages labor from ownership of the health of the state however nowadays drug law on compensation of damage and destruction of certain categories of real estate as a result of hostilities terrorist acts sabotage caused by the military aggression of the of the russian federation is considered by the ukrainian parliament the drug law was initiated just after the full-scale aggression of russia and there are really high expectations high hopes on the adoption of that law which will set the legal framework of the reparation mechanism in ukraine and finally i would like with uh yes thank you i would like to focus on the role of our organization the right to protection which i'm representing now in providing of legal aid in the reparation context right to protection is one of the leaders of the human rights movement in ukraine in the in the field of protection of the rights of internally displaced persons refugees and state persons the stateless persons it provides psychological humanitarian cash assistance and sure we provide legal aid in different ways legal consultations both hotline and live legal support before the state authorities representation in the in the courts in our work we have right to protection has an established internal and external referral system which permits to work effectively and we succeeded in many hlp cases as of today in particular we have 60 beneficiaries who were assisted in obtaining compensation through the administrative mechanism about 20 cases against ukraine in which our lawyers won on positive obligations now we do not conduct cases against russia uh is there are issues on enforcement of decisions against it and also now our advocacy department is currently working to finalize implement compensation mechanism under the draft law which i mentioned above uh that's all i wanted to say very briefly thank you very much for your attention thank you thank you jerozlava thank you so much from this perspective on the compensation mechanism um please the alexander the floor is yours from uh eski human rights union thank you uh first of all i welcome all of participants of this webinar and i will continue the uh uh theme developed by uh previous speakers and my task is to present now the uh um free legal aid system and possibility to provide the legal aid and legal assistance to vulnerable groups to victims that suffered from the uh consequences of the war started in 2014 in ukraine by russian aggression and um uh we have well established free legal aid system that started the operating since 2012 and the first uh primary legal aid assistance was provided since 2013 uh exactly on the eve of the invasion of russia to ukraine and just one example of the effectiveness of the free legal aid system uh these statistics demonstrate that the secondary legal aid in ukraine provided by the lawyers mainly uh advocates of this free legal aid system since the beginning of the working uh uh 2013 from the first january till the end of the last 2022 was about 8 uh 137 000 uh particular individual cases supported by the advocates in the secondary i i just repeat it's not the consultations it's secondary legal aid in the criminal proceedings and other criminal matters and it's really the effective structure that continue to follow the challenges arised by the uh effects and the consequences of the war and with providing the uh consultations and uh possible legal assistance to the weak teams of this war and with the changes introduced into the legislation they have a right to have among the clients the idps and the weak teams of the war and uh those we have much a lot brighter uh possibility with the um uh legal assistance uh in all non-only criminal but also civic matters and supporting the to the uh weak teams of the war ukraine and halsinki human rights union uh or in uh its life has the uh 20 uh public reception offices with the lawyers that provided the free legal aid in very different almost in all regions of ukraine especially with the uh focus on the vulnerable groups and mainly with the idps and well uh it's the complex activity that um provided not only the legal assistance but also we receive the information and the facts of the uh possible um war crimes or uh other challenges and facts of the um uh uh uh crimes that uh are occurred due to this war and uh we try to introduce these uh data not only in the uh register but uh also in the um possible uh uh legislative work and mentioned by anesthesia the uh draft law was also uh with some uh work uh of the lawyers of our organization we provided some proposals to the uh draft legislation on the uh possible compensation for the destroyed property and uh uh we also well just one example uh on the effectiveness of the uh these 20 public reception offices in last 2022 is uh uh about 15 000 consultations uh and uh such amount allows us to have some statistical analysis and to present the most uh um significant uh uh uh groups or and uh groups of population and the possible cases that are uh uh of most importance and just one uh uh number is presented here that idps uh are uh about 53 percent among the uh clients of this public reception offices and the main topics that were discussed and uh uh the clients addressed with uh where the uh reimbursement and the compensations uh um in uh the all possible uh manners and here i may just uh refer to the uh uh huge uh initiative that uh uh uh um invited the person to uh bring the uh uh cases to the european court of human rights was uh initiative uh launched by the ministry of justice and ministry of digitalization including our organization ukraine hasn't human rights union and uh well uh just one example in the first day of opening of such possibility to introduce through the uh digital uh means the datas uh well uh the number of the person who addressed to the services was more than 130 000 so it was an enormous number of the uh uh person who tried to get to the european court of human rights with the uh claim for the uh uh or just information about the damages that uh they uh were the victims and um we uh are working with the strategic litigation cases and i ask to uh the next slide we work also with the uh paula please uh we uh we work also with the difficulties that arise from the uh uh um consequences of the war uh and the main uh problems are un non-controlled and occupied territories that were occupied uh since 2014 and uh with the um invasion since 21st of february of last year 2022 we have newly occupied uh territory in four regions and now uh these territories are not only gray zone of law but i may uh determine it as a black zone of law because no law is here and i hear may refer just on one uh memory that was since 2014 when the uh some territories were occupied by russian proxies and then de-occupied by ukrainian forces and uh i've asked of one of the uh governor of lugansk region how many times uh they used to reintegrate all legal procedures and reestablish ukrainian legislation and ukrainian order let's say uh well and it takes several months for the territories that were under occupation for several weeks so several weeks of occupation and six uh eight months is for restoration of legal rules and the normal life and here we have the eight almost eight year of occupation and uh more than eight year of occupation and the lack of legislation and the lack of recognized institutions and bodies on these territories and uh plus we have also the all the problems that are referred to the transitional justice uh and the uh issue of the collaboration uh and here i may mention that even the uh the members of the legal process like judges prosecutors and advocates they are in very different position because when we're speaking about the lawyers as advocates uh then we have to rely on their possibility to protect or somebody to save uh in these huge or in these very difficult conditions that are on non-control territories and uh last attempt in ukraine with the proposals to consider the uh advocates at the collaborators uh were uh also one of the challenge that was uh uh arised before the legal society ukrainian legal society and uh well successfully uh we've overcome these uh uh legislative attempts but just one example how the steps to the transitional justice systems should be presented and prepared and uh include uh all the possible uh steps uh that uh uh are constructed on uh ukrainian side and we'll take into account the role the uh responsibility and the uh involvement in the processes on non-control territories and um well one of bright uh of the bright example is the penitentiary issue and uh and uh i may say that since uh uh the beginning of the war uh 2014 ukraine lost about 16 000 persons on non-control territories and uh uh uh it's a very strange situation when the russia at the uh foreign state take ukrainian prisoners and uh transfer them to other uh colonies on russian territory and instead of return to ukrainian territory and the good question is about the uh newly uh um uh verdicted prisoners who are on non-control territories and what ukraine will do with this uh penitentiary population without uh uh considering them as the criminals from the their state point of view and um we uh here uh have more problems than uh decisions but still we have some proposals and recommendations and i ask to uh uh uh come to the next slide to the last one uh for the solution and here we have uh probably the most sophisticated and the best way in uh in our view the strategic litigation our organization probably the biggest in ukraine that has the uh uh most significant number of the cases in the european court of human rights and uh now we have more than 250 pending cases uh related to this war only to this war and uh for very different uh items mentioned uh uh the article one uh of the protocol one right to property mostly we have the article three uh it's uh uh right not to be uh the victim of the torturing human treatment and uh uh uh right to life uh reflected in the article two uh well and uh we expect that the strategic litigation will uh uh duly um help with the uh elaboration or not only the decision on the level of the european court of human rights but also with the uh mechanism on uh national level with the um um facing the problems and overcoming all the problems and here we have just uh several uh i'm finishing thank you thank you so much because of the other speakers thanks so i'm finishing oh okay sorry after your sign well thank you thank you so much alexander that was uh really uh reaching and the uh reflections around the effect of long years of occupation are definitely uh worrisome um let me give the floor to uh undp to evan and sorry again for having to cut the presentation but we are just aware of the time thanks thank you good afternoon or good morning uh colleagues so speaking on behalf of undp uh ukraine um here as you will see in a slide like usually usual um un's uh battery of terminology references to um agenda for sustainable development and sustainable development goals is here just to highlight uh that uh free legal aid is a part of access to justice and access to justice as a part of uh of the whole a whole uh a range of goals uh moving towards uh you know inclusive society with you know peaceful just inclusive society uh are uh key referential strategic points for for undp so every activity that has to do with uh um access to justice and free legal aid is basically based on on on these on these strategic reference points and there these are applied throughout uh undp country offices all over the globe um working uh either to address uh human rights issues human rights relations but also people impacted by the conflict as well as to build to build a good governance in in peace time so uh free legal aid as often said either as a direct goal or is it just or is is a part of tools for achieving other goals as as mentioned here on this slide so I won't dwell on that just to to say that uh also in ukraine uh development of free legal aid system legal aid access to justice has been a goal in itself a separate goal for for undp but it's also a part of many different programs and projects and some and sub projects which are which are having some some other particular goal and this this is all now coming into play together and is being joined in in response to the conflict to the war in in ukraine so next slide please yeah so uh as we're just to go briefly to through a situation in ukraine i mean the ukraine has a very developed free legal aid system of a hybrid type so that we dedicate instead of state authorities and contracted law but with you know with a lot of cooperation with civil society organizations as also mentioned here uh one of the broadest ranges of potential beneficiaries compared to other countries especially when it comes to to uh civil civil matters uh but then uh it has uh been facing uh a tremendous tremendous challenges uh we are now referring to 24 february of 2002 and the expression we're using for you know for this benchmark date is full-scale invasion and this is because there was a invasion preceding this february invasion so there was a armed conflict but territorially limited and also limited in scale taking place in donetsk and lchansk and anioc also belligerent occupation of of kremia which is you know still still ongoing uh which uh already posed uh significant challenges and changed the way how a legal aid system is is operating it added some categories which had not existed before such as i internally displaced persons idps and war veterans in the meantime then also in the meantime in the meantime and additionally victims of conflicts related sexual violence crimes torture and ill treatment were added as as categories with the most recent changes of the free legal aid law in in 2000 2022 but this conflict since 2014 already provided for some opportunities for the for the free legal aid system for a country for government government for civil society organization as well as for international actually including UNDP to try to address some of the challenges and problems which prepared unintentionally the country also to become an affiliate legal aid system to become even more resilient now after the full-scale invasion so with uh as of february 2024 there are many key you know challenges first of all extreme systemic stress that the country is under attack so they're they're especially now with missile other waves of missile attacks uh the life is in jeopardy everywhere so there is an ongoing destruction of a large-scale loss of life torture loss of property livelihoods loss of documentation and and so on and the growing number of idps refugees other victims of the conflicts and so on and also competing needs so whether to what are the priorities defense and security uh but even when speaking of about addressing uh you know concrete concrete cases or or concrete uh concrete issues raised by by by individuals or provision provision of rights there is also a challenge of the whole system operating in the context of a legal context of martial law but there are also uh i want to emphasize some uh comparative advantages i want to say comparative advantages of ukraine compared to other situations of either post-conflict situations or not not so much places elsewhere in the world ongoing conflict first of all there is a functional and resilient uh free legal aid system and very functional government you know with with all the mass scale destruction and atrocities this is still this is very functional country experience accrued since 2014 as i mentioned then also very importantly political commitment by the government and all the key political political stakeholders as well as strong social contract so the population the civil society everyone is now playing as as as one especially when it comes to protection protection of rights so this is not something that has been present basically in in the largest number of of countries facing challenges either after conflicts or during the conflict there is also eu accession uh path for for ukraine which means uh embracement of of uh EU standards not necessarily only in relation to free legal aid but you know in general and also uh importantly international support which has been quickly deployed and which is which is uh ongoing and one of the conclusions of the of the survey that was done recently was that uh with you know despite all the challenges the population at large but especially those the most affected and most vulnerable including IDPs have ranked their satisfaction with the free legal aid system uh rather highly as as you can see uh so please next slide just to go briefly uh to what UNDP uh was doing and has been doing in support to free legal aid system in in ukraine uh we have like two tier but two tiered approach but um very inter tangled approach one on one side working with national authorities on the other with the with civil society organization so from amongst national authorities free legal aid coordination center is a is a key partner and there's been a number of activities and projects in support provided to them here some of them are listed i will not spend a lot of time on them just to highlight that it was the support to uh development of online solution for for improving access to justice so the UNDP's role in in this providing this support was to provide um IT expertise IT support but also legal expertise and legal knowledge how to craft this IT solution so in order to fit the the needs and the legal legal process then the help desk as i mentioned the here tracking of distribution legal aid request online learning courses and so on all the way to providing technical support which is now ongoing to free legal aid centers to address the the the the basic challenges posed by the by the armed conflict and invasion so this is provision of material equipment especially for free legal aid local centers that have been relocated uh and there is a also something that we believe would help um uh functioning of the whole uh justice system and this is further integration of mediation into a free legal aid system so there was a mediation will pass in 2021 as far as i know but there are still mediation and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to be developed and development of mediation and integration of the mediation in this system may unburden courts and institutions even administrative institutions and and help solve many problems outside the court process which would also strengthen the social social fabric uh next slide please uh so as i said the the other stream of of of partnership and activities is with local civil society actors which mainly bowled down through our program the um uh dealing or addressing challenges uh in in the east so in the donbas area and lukhansk and and and um donetsk quarterly since 2017 from reaching out remote settlements and and people living close to contact lines through civil society organizations training paralegals among local roma community advocates in hiring or lawyers in local pilot community in donetsk and lukhansk oblast to support to small and newly created civil society organizations some of these activities are finished as planned some had to be discontinued because of the of the war at the moment there is uh there are also two important these are just examples and the two additional examples of ongoing support that i want wanted to highlight is provision of free legal aid services to idp's in four transit and five coast communities and the capacity development of 20 local civil society organizations as as legal legal aid providers in transit and host communities and this support from UNDP and the need for support will will be growing as the as the number of the victims of the conflict as the level of of destruction unfortunately and the number of those vulnerable is going to grow until until at the end of the war um the i would i would just ask you for for next slide and before moving to to uh concluding with uh something that is still to be explored and still still to be done i would just like to highlight that a couple of lessons learned from previous activities uh and and and support and in the situation of an ongoing conflict of in drawing lessons learned is is quite tricky because they're you know moving targets and and and the the developments on a on a daily base which creates new needs which have not been even um uh anticipated before they they happen uh it what proven very instrumental in helping people and maintaining the system is is development of um it tools generally digitalization is is one of the one of the key strategic strategic developments uh in in in the last decade or so that that helped also you know government in Ukraine became so so resilient the other one could be also a decentralization as well as the very developed civil civil sector so partnering up with with civil sector used to uh help in strengthening social social fabrics in in different communities now we can also in communities and in the east of Ukraine now we can also transpose these experiences and importance emphasize the importance of strengthening social fabrics also uh in in communities where there are there are a lot of internally displaced persons who are finding finding their their new new homes there or new new jobs and and trying to uh to settle there at least for the for the time for the time being it is very important to constantly maintain communication with the most immediate beneficiaries of the of UNDP's interventions in this case these were uh free legal aid centers as well as the the final final uh users uh so that you know to to adjust uh all the all the um tools that were developed to create new ones or to transpose them to maybe to serve new new purposes so moving away from from what has been what UNDP has been doing so far and now I'm moving into the area of what would be usually traditionally you know consider a transitional justice mechanisms but I left it for the end because this is something that is still to be done and to be worked on criminal accountability for war crimes there is a huge now um uh development support provided by the international community and a great commitment by by judiciary national judiciary uh in in Ukraine this is something that would require a lot of intervention also in terms of of free free legal aid from then and then there are already already such mechanisms uh appearing or working such as victims victims hotlines there would be a need for training defense attorneys to to provide the defense in line with fair trial rights for the for the defendants in these cases which which has been also initiated by the center for free legal aid itself which is very commendable then victim support this is something that I believe uh would use the experiences of working with victims of war crimes to provide for a comprehensive victim support system for all criminal cases that would be in line with the 2012 uh EU directive for support to victims of violent violent crimes and this is something that UNDP is also strategically moving moving towards and at the end reparations and I said at the end because a lot of what has been done also through free legal aid so far have uh have had and is having a reparative effect reparatory effect but there is still no comprehensive and dedicated reparation system yet it's still under it's still under construction uh there is a the the government in partnership with the civil society organization and with UN agencies with IOM being in the lead is working on on on the on designing a long term comprehensive uh and a whole of a government and whole of a society approach to to reparations and once these these comprehensive long term reparations are in place as well as possible interim reparations especially for the most vulnerable group most likely this is going to be for the victims of uh and survivors of complicated sexual violence crimes there would be important role for free legal aid as a sort of a gateway uh for the reparations uh as a first an initial contact point that would then refer to victim survivors users those that are entitled to reparations to further referral pathways that are going to be to be created and this is something that is still being being discussed and we believe would be soon be designed because there is a strong commitment and and desire both on the part of the society and the government unlike in many other post conflict or conflict situations to to uh have reparations mechanisms in place. Thank you and I'm here to answer also questions as well as my two colleagues with Lana Kuliszko and Ivan Honczuk who are working on the ground on on on free legal aid. Thank you so much thank you Ivan thank you Aleksander and thank you Jaroslawa for the great inputs on the different approaches I would like to give you the floor to Claudia the senior protection cluster coordinator from Ukraine for closing remark on the case of Ukraine I hope some of you can stay a little bit longer for the questions and answer section I'm sorry this presentation took long but I hope they were enriching as much as they were for me the old speakers brought a lot of their work to stage today and a lot of reflection thank you over to you Claudia. Thank you very much Carla thank you colleagues I mean I I don't want to take too much time because what needed to be said has been said and I think that just the link it up with the presentation the UNDP colleagues just gave one of the aspects the forward-looking perspective right from a cluster point of view which is in itself dealing with the humanitarian coordination of a protection response but I think it is forward-looking considering what are the things that the people communicate back to us IDPs in premise just to give an example we really had a protection monitoring tool currently rolled out revised trying to assess access to remedies and still we have a significant percentage of individuals being assessed primarily IDPs who are unaware of specific mechanism for remedies and compensation for conflict related injuries so I think coupled with the HLP discussion that and the presentation that R2P colleagues gave at the beginning really gives a bit of a perspective of what's Ukrainian CSOs, humanitarian development, key stakeholders and government actors we need to look into just as a close up from the cluster point of view what we try to do is that we try very much to leverage with the existing legal aid group the HLP technical working group just to name a few advocacy working group we try to leverage on partners expertise in legal provision in legal assistance trying to capitalize on what they do best which is indeed legal support and legal counseling and trying to find solutions to most some I mean some not all but certainly some of the legal issues that arise in the context of HLP compensation and access to remedies it is not easy of course also because we need to recognize different realities different contextual challenges but is the what what we try to facilitate with the class that bring it together legal actors, HLP experts, other protection actors to work together on common files from different angles and I think that is indeed the added value and now we are going to be able as the context moves and shifts to find solutions which is not one fit for all but it's very much looking at the different realities of conflict-affective people in Ukraine. Just as a close up and thank you very much for inviting Ukraine and for the colleagues from Colombia before over. Thank you, thank you Claudia I think your your closing remarks are very well noted and they fit I think well to very well with the three ambitions of this workshop which as I mentioned at the beginning also touched upon the issue of awareness raising of hard-to-reach population among which displaced on the opportunities to get remedies so definitely I think the role of coordination of the protection cluster is very well welcomed in Ukraine and in other in other contexts. Thank you so much for all the speakers from the 2k studies we heard today I think they reflected upon common challenges but also lessons learned around coordination and good practices around use of data, digitalization, participatory and inclusive approaches with victims and support for victims to participate in special transitional justice jurisdiction and to access justice. I think overall the work of the task team on law and policy with this project has been also to recognize that the really legal aid is at the center of humanitarian intervention and also very much anchored in access to justice intervention sorry I think that someone is talking the same time so I think I'll open up I know that the time is a bit over for question and answer but given that some the majority of the speakers are still here if there are any burning questions from the audience we really much appreciate you taking the floor well yes Mark please over to you. Thank you so much for the interesting insights I you know one question I wanted to ask everybody is it may go beyond the the specific examples of this group because in many cases you're looking both you know Colombia and in Ukraine are slightly different to that you have a long standing conflict in one there was a lot of time to develop legal frameworks and legislation to make sure too you could address this Ukraine's trying to do that now absent sort of the the existence of a major conflict what are the what are the motivating factors that would get states to actually put in place the types of measures necessary did you find in your experiences that there were certain certain legislative mechanisms that could be put in place that would allow for access to legal aid and facilitate access to legal aid part of the reason I'm asking is we did a joint paper with UNHCR on using the rule of law as a tool for addressing statelessness and of course there are similar challenges and that you need to have legal mechanisms in place regulatory frameworks in place and a responsiveness so I know just checking your experience what are those what are some of the triggers you found that were the most effective ways to get states to think about putting in place this those frameworks thank you would you like to take Stephanie's question as well so maybe then we get yes thanks uh please Stephanie the very first hi Martina hi everybody um well I just wanted to recognize the word of the United United Nations agencies and the other speakers many times I just wanted to remark that these agencies generate more trust in the community than the same state or official entities that also provide legal aid so I wanted to just remark that my name is Stephanie Vargas I'm a professor at Harvard and University and I just wanted to ask you some some things I know that there have been many constraints for the restitution of indigenous people people's land in Colombia one of them is that very often legal aid is provided in Spanish not in their indigenous languages and also most of their official documents on transitional justice and reparation mechanisms is also written in Spanish so since UN agencies and other international organizations has been working in providing a legal aid I would like to know how have you been addressing this in terms of providing legal aid on the languages of ethnic groups in in Colombia if this has been addressed or if have you identified the same challenge and another question that I have is that we are in front of I mean we have seen through your presentations that we are facing like the expansion of a legal aid services and I just wanted to know if I mean legal aid services from universities from UN agencies from other international organizations and I just wanted to know if have you considered the implications of the expansion of these legal aid services and consulate services if this has been considered the impacts on the judicialization of reparation policies or peace policies or transitional justice I mean and if sometimes the judicialization of policies has advantages advantages or disadvantages so I would like to to know that please okay so maybe I can answer the first question of Estefany actually NRCs have been working for a long time with indigenous communities especially with two techniques that is Waunan and Embera and it happened when we tried to do to provide trainings on information consuling services to the community we also need the help of the leaders and most of the time they are our translators but also we have seen that for example is more difficult for the women of the of the communities that they can express what they think in some moments they actually they consider that they don't speak Spanish but you realize that actually they can understand you so in this moment we are working especially in the services that we provide in the emergencies in the massive emergencies of those communities and in this moment we are translating some documents related to the access to the victim register and also we are working in some videos and audios in Embera and in Waunan and about three specific subjects the first one is who is NRC and so the people of the community they can understand in their own language what we have been doing there and the second subject of the video and the audio is related to the access to the right in the reparation and the assistance to the victims especially the related to displacement the three video and audio the third one is related to the mechanics that we have to the people they can express if they are agree to our services or maybe if there is something wrong that we have done and they want to let us know so I think that maybe at the middle of this year we are going to have these audio these videos and also the documents in their own language so we are going to be very happy to share with all of you these materials I think that there is too much to do with indigenous and especially with some indigenous communities and especially those that are located in hard to reach areas but I think that at least is is one step thank you thank you Maria and I'm not sure there are some of the participants Ivan or Claudia that want to address the question from Mark it would be interesting to hear your views thanks yeah maybe maybe I can try to if I understood question well it was about the the motivations or mechanisms that that triggered the development of free legal aid system and well I mean definitely the conflict and and the transitional justice needs and exigencies has not been something that moved development of free legal aid system in Ukraine forward because this is something that the free legal aid system is now learning to cope with and will be coping with so the the the triggering motivations were you know preceded the all these development and as someone who worked on you know in other countries in a similar institutional cultural context in Europe like in western Balkans or elsewhere again I can I would assume that this is a combination of different factors that were in play you know I play various countries of Eastern Europe this is always a combination of a genuine determination and a need but on you know and realization why some people in the in the in the government also in the civil society and you know academic circles probably to enable you know people to endure their rights as much as possible to empower them through you know being able to make informed decisions to to contest discrimination to uh and has his people's trust in the justice system to provide for you know enabling that way greater state legitimacy and then ultimately stronger governance and and so on and so forth and then the second the the second stream of motivations was always coming you know like with a desire to be a part of the group we speak about context of European states whether it would be to accept all the standards created under the system of the Council of Europe and those developed by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights or those created nationally by states that were or were becoming EU member states and this may apply even to countries that were not always on a steady European path but at the time when Ukraine adopted a free legal aid law in 2011 it preceded the revolution of dignity so it was moving towards the EU but there was no that at that time still there's such a clear EU membership perspective forward but it took time for you know to turn in in Ukraine from 2009 from 1996 when the Constitution was adopted and it was a provision basically calling for allowing for free legal aid to a free legal aid law to be to be materialized so it's always a long process and then a long process to to develop the fully functional free legal aid system thank you Ivan Mark I think I gave some food for thought on on your question I think there are two questions in the chat one I look at you Claudia even if it's related to IOM I'm not sure IOM is still present in the room but it's related to IOM let effort to elaborate comprehensive approach to reparations and what are the avenues for Ukraine to participate to that process I'm not sure whether this has been discussed within the protection cluster group if not I would then put in touch with the right colleagues of IOM and then another question for UNDP what are the protection measures UNDP use to ensure that victims and defendants are participating in transitional justice systems and policy won't further face protection issues so all the measures about protection of victims that participate to legal and reparation proceedings a hydro had to live so I'm not sure whether some speakers from Colombia can answer that questions otherwise I will definitely put you in touch with the with the right interlocutor thank you yes I see that on these two questions we will have to follow up with with the speakers so I'll take attentive note and and and put you in touch maybe if there are no other questions I would say we end the webinar here with a big thanks to the speakers who have worked hard on the presentation to share good practices and in terms of the next step I will definitely follow up with those who have participated share the recordings share the presentations and as well trying to pull together some lessons learned and good practices that emerge from the different participants and the different approaches thanks again to UNDP UNITCR R2P Helsinki Human Rights Group and NRC for for the hard work and thank you for all who have taken the time to listen and participate actively so thanks thanks to you thank you