Mobilising Human Rights and Resistance: reflections on the HuRiEE workshop

At the end of March, the workshop Mobilising Human Rights and Resistance, organised as part of  HuRiEE by Dr Agnieszka Kubal and Hanna Oliinyk, took place at the University of Oxford. The event drew a large and engaged audience for two days of discussion on accountability, legal frameworks, and resistance in the context of war.

The workshop opened with a public panel, From Nuremberg to Ukraine: The Quest for Accountability and the Special Tribunal, welcomed by Prof Rachel Murray (Director, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights) and moderated by Dr Agnieszka Kubal. The panel featured Dr Mykola Gnatovskyy (Judge at the European Court of Human Rights), Prof Adam Bodnar (former Minister of Justice of Poland, 2023–2025), Oleksandra Matviichuk (Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, Kyiv; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 2022), Marharyta Sokorenko (Government Agent of Ukraine before the ECtHR), and Dr Tsvetelina van Benthem (University of Oxford and University of Reading).

I am grateful for this opportunity! Thank you for organizing such an important event! I hope to stay in touch and to continue our cooperation in the future! – Oleksandra Matviychuk (Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, Kyiv; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 2022)

The second day continued with two panels examining key dimensions of accountability and documentation. The first, The Role of National and Supranational Accountability Mechanisms in Addressing Human Rights and Other Serious Violations of International Law, explored how domestic courts and international institutions — including the ECtHR, ICC, ICJ, and UN human rights mechanisms — respond to large-scale violations during armed conflict. Speakers included Dr Kateryna Busol (Kyiv Mohyla Academy), Dr Dilek Kurban (University of Amsterdam and ACIL), Dr Agnieszka Kubal, and Illia Chernohorenko (Faculty of Law, Oxford), and was moderated by Dr Beáta Huszka.

I just wanted to say what an amazing event last night was. How you managed to get such a fantastic panel was incredible. – Prof Rachel Murray (Director, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights)

The final panel, NGOs and Media: Shaping Legal Narratives and War Crimes Investigations, focused on the role of Ukrainian civil society and media in documenting war crimes and shaping accountability processes. Contributions came from Dr Sasha Dovzhyk (Director, INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange), Evgeny Maloletka (Associated Press photojournalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, 2023), Maksym Demydenko (Executive Director, Ukraine War Archive), and Anastasiia Loza (Media Initiative for Human Rights), with Hanna Oliinyk as moderator.

The event created a space for reflection on the challenges of mobilising human rights in the face of war and authoritarianism, while highlighting the importance of collaboration across legal, academic, and civil society communities.