Not My Church: Ukraine’s New Draft Law Dealing with the Ukraine Orthodox Church of (not) the Moscow Patriarchate

Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Director of the Centre for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine). An earlier version of this piece was posted on Forum18.

The Russia-Ukraine war, starting with the annexation of Crimea and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine and continuing with Russia’s full-scale invasion, has had a tremendous effect on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and other related human rights in the region. Murders, tortures, forced detention, and FoRB violations—including forced displacement of priests and believers, acts of religious discrimination and social hatred to religious minorities inspired and directed by Russian proxies, as well as expropriations of religious properties—have become the reality of the territories occupied by Russia in 2014 and 2022.

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The Role of Religious Groups in the 2016 Colombian Plebiscite for Peace and the Implementation of the Peace Agreement

Carlos Bernal Pulido is a professor of law at the University of Dayton School of Law and University of La Sabana (Colombia), serves as a commissioner at the Interamerican Human Rights Commission, and was a justice at the Constitutional Court of Colombia (2017–20). The following is an edited summary of his remarks at the ICLRS 29th Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 3 October 2022.

The topic of this Symposium, “Religion’s Roles in Peacebuilding,” is important and relevant in many regions of the world. But I would like to talk today about the peace process in Colombia, my country of origin, and the role of religious groups in that process, or lack thereof. There are lessons to be learned from Colombia’s experience, and I would like to highlight several relevant points.

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The War and Religion in Ukraine: The Role of NGOs in Evidence Collection for Future International Trials

Michelle Coleman is a lecturer in law at Swansea University.

The war in Ukraine is possibly the most documented war in history. Governments, news organizations, the International Criminal Court, NGOs, and individuals are continually monitoring and documenting events as they take place in real time. Some of this collection and preservation of information is with an eye toward determining whether war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed.

In March 2022 I wrote for this blog about the importance of information collection before deciding whether international criminal law would be pertinent to the war in Ukraine. I argued that the need for prosecutions and trials can only be determined following a thorough investigation. Some time must pass while a conflict is ongoing in order to gain perspective, gather evidence, and sort through what might be a war crime or crime against humanity and what might just be an unfortunate, but legal, consequence of war. Now, nearly a year later, we can consider the importance of this information gathering and how it may be used within the context of international criminal law.

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