1 november 2024 # School Club

Can Vetting (Lustration) Be an Effective Tool to Overcome the Negative Consequences of the Occupation of Part of Ukraine?

On 31 October, the School held the USPS Club dedicated to the tool of vetting (lustration) to overcome the negative consequences of russian aggression and occupation of part of Ukraine.

Tamila Tasheva, Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Head of the National Office of the Crimean Platform and 2021 USPS alumnus, stressed the need to introduce vetting as a reintegration tool that will help restore public trust in the government and promote stability in the region.

Indeed, vetting needs to be introduced as a reintegration tool that will help restore public trust in the government and promote stability in the region. Vetting procedures should be based on a case-by-case approach and international standards and should strike a balance between ensuring security and the need for professionals to operate institutions in the liberated territories. Lustration should not become a means of collective accountability but should be based on clearly defined criteria, supported by independent commissions and provide for the possibility of appealing the results of vetting.

During the panel discussion, Daria Svyrydova, partner at AZONES Law Firm, emphasised the need to abandon lustration as a principle of revenge in favour of the principle of administrative control so as not to bring a negative stigma to important and necessary vetting.

Lustration is not about revenge. It is an administrative vetting procedure to restrict access to important positions in state institutions for people who have compromised themselves by cooperating with the occupier. It is about ensuring trust in the process of restoring power in the liberated territories. It is about the safety of people and the image security of Ukraine. Finally, it is about justice, which cannot be reduced to justice alone, but also about reputational memory because society must be convinced that responsibility is not meaningless but effective.

Vitalii Bezgin, MP, Chair of the Subcommittee on Administrative and Territorial Structure of the VRU Committee on the Organisation of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, stressed the need to consider the political component when applying the vetting tool (lustration).

We will have major problems without the political component of lustration on the basis of political affiliation. We can see this in Moldova and Georgia. If we do not get rid of pro-russian politicians and russia fails to conquer Ukraine militarily, then after the war, russia will again play the political card with the “peace parties.” So, political lustration is an important component. We are now working to convince our international partners of this.

Oleksandr Kliuzhev, Electoral Law Reform Expert at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in Ukraine and 2018 USPS alumnus noted that the post-war political election process would be accompanied by constant risks, namely security and political stability risks, which should also be taken into account in lustration processes.

Our goal should not be a one-time solution but rather to build an entire system to prevent the repetition of past mistakes. In this aspect, an alternative method of restriction will help prevent the degradation of the electoral process, for example, by expanding people’s access to information about the people’s past, which will make candidates themselves liable for false testimony. Based on this logic, a mechanism that will both comply with international standards and reduce our society’s risks can be developed.

Kostiantyn Kharakoz, a judge of the Economic Court of Donetsk Oblast, emphasised the extreme importance of not crossing the line of humanity when developing the concept of future vetting.

The lustration procedure that was applied in 2014 has signs of collective responsibility. If we discuss applying the vetting tool (lustration) now, it should be about restoring the Ukrainian government, not about expelling it. We cannot take revenge on people. We must criminalise certain actions, not categories of people. There are human rights and legal certainty in a democratic country with the rule of law. We cannot ignore this. As for the lustration, the end does not justify the means. Otherwise, we risk building a russia with a Ukrainian flag.

The event was moderated by Olena Lunova, Advocacy Director of the ZMINA Human Rights Centre. We thank the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the ZMINA Human Rights Centre for initiating and supporting important discussions.