Secretariat of UN inquiry commission on Ukraine shrunk over liquidity crisis
This was reported by a member of the Commission, Indian rights activist Vrinda Grover, who spoke in an interview with Ukrinform.
"Due to the ongoing liquidity crisis and recruitment freeze, at the United Nations, our Commission has been significantly affected. Initially, our Secretariat consisted of 24 members, but we now have only 13 members in the Commission Secretariat. If a position at the Secretariat falls vacant, we cannot hire a new person to fill the same," she said.
According to Grover, while investigators and other staff still remain in the Vienna-based secretariat, some key positions, such as the chief investigator, legal advisor, and child rights expert, have been lost.
“When the strength of the Secretariat is reduced so drastically and key positions are no longer available, the work does not stop, nor does the rigor of the work diminish. However, the breadth of issues that we can investigate is likely to be impacted and members of the Secretariat shoulder a significantly increased workload,” the Commission member said.
She also noted that the lack of financial resources has directly affected the ability of the Commission members to travel. As a result, during the third mandate – from March 2024 to March 2025 – none of the Commission members traveled to Ukraine. According to Grover, while technology allows for remote and hybrid meetings, online meetings with the Ukrainian authorities, “it has its limitations”. However, the Commission's investigators continued to travel to Ukraine.
"As a Commission, we have also previously travelled to Kyiv and other locations in Ukraine. However, during the third mandate, due to budgetary constraints, we, the Commissioners, were unable to travel to Ukraine. We considered it more prudent to allocate the limited resources to the investigators for travel. The investigators conduct both in-person meetings and remote interviews, with victims and witnesses; and a wide range of other interlocutors, including civil society organizations," the rights activist said.
She added that the Commission also receives data from the Ukrainian authorities. "All the information received is then collected and analyzed. And we follow a scrupulous and rigorous verification process to ensure that the information, evidence, or testimony we receive is credible, corroborated and authenticated," the UN Commission member said.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2022 to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, as well as related crimes in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The Commission is composed of Eric Mose (Chair), Pablo de Greif, and Vrinda Grover.
