Seeking Visibility and Accountability in Russia’s War on Ukraine: Efforts Towards Disability‑Inclusive Justice

[Ruby Axelson is the Head of Gender and Child Justice at Global Rights Compliance.

Tobias Freeman is a senior lawyer working with Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine and member of the IHL Centre’s Expert Group on Inclusion.

Danielle DerOhannesian is an international lawyer and former prosecutor specialising in child justice and trauma‑informed accountability for conflict‑related crimes against and affecting children. 

Mykola Palamar is a Legal Advisory/Deputy Team Lead at Global Rights Compliance Foundation specialising in IHL, ICL, and accountability processes including child justice.]

Global Rights Compliance (GRC) is an international legal organisation that works on the ground with Ukrainian partners to advance accountability for international crimes and justice for victims and affected communities, with a focus on conflict-related sexual violence, justice for children, and the rights of persons with disabilities. For more information about GRC’s work in Ukraine, please visit the GRC website or email gender.childjustice [at] grcompliance.org.

During another brutal Ukrainian winter, millions of people are living through blackouts and surviving without reliable heating as critical energy infrastructure is repeatedly attacked. For persons with disabilities who cannot evacuate, and who depend on electricity for assistive devices, communication, or life-sustaining equipment, it can mean being left to freeze in inaccessible apartments or institutions they cannot leave, cut off from care, information and basic services.

Persons with disabilities in Ukraine have been disproportionately and differentially affected since the armed conflict began in 2014, and especially following Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. While the true breadth and scale of crimes committed against persons with disabilities is unknown, documentation reveals emerging patterns of unlawful killing, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement, and attacks on civilian objects such as health facilities and schools. Yet across domestic and international accountability processes, the wartime harms endured by persons with disabilities remain largely overlooked.

Ukraine exposes a systemic failure in international justice. Not only are persons with disability harmed disproportionately, crimes against or affecting persons with disabilities receive scant attention, inclusive processes in the investigation and prosecution of crimes are absent, and the voices of persons with disabilities are unheard. Ukraine therefore offers lessons for international policy and practice: how to build disability indicators into investigations, how to adapt inclusive and accessible processes in interviewing and survivor support, and how to avoid reinforcing institutionalisation while pursuing justice. These are the minimum requirements of a survivor-centred approach that reflects states’ legal obligations under UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2475 and access-to-justice guarantees in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

From Structural Exclusion to Evidentiary Erasure

It is impossible to understand the conflict-related vulnerabilities facing people with disabilities in Ukraine, including challenges for accessing justice, without recognising the long history of structural discrimination and institutionalisation. For decades, persons with disabilities and especially those with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities have faced entrenched stigma, systematic deprivation of legal and political agency, limited access to support services and economic independence, and exclusion from community life. Medicalised approaches to disability, a legacy of Soviet-era policy, continue to shape law, policy and practice despite years of activism by organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs).

A core structural consequence is the widespread institutionalisation of persons with disabilities, particularly children, in residential facilities and “specialised” boarding schools. The CRPD Committee has described institutionalisation as a form of violence, stressing that segregated settings erode autonomy and heighten exposure to abuse. Before the full-scale invasion, more than 105,000 children were living in residential institutions – the highest rate in Europe after Russia – and many remain in institutional settings into adulthood. 

Despite important progress in aligning Ukrainian law and policy with the CRPD since ratification in 2010, momentum has largely stalled. The war has strained social services, intensified displacement, reinforced institutionalisation patterns of children, internally displaced persons and veterans, and increased both the prevalence of disability and the number of survivors whose needs remain unmet in justice and reform initiatives. These conditions are not merely contextual background but have shaped the experiences of persons with disability during the conflict and their vulnerability to international crimes. The combination of high exposure to violence and low visibility in legal processes has turned structural exclusion into evidentiary erasure amid the largest documentation project ever mounted by a state during active hostilities.

War’s Impacts and the Institutional Frontline 

Russia’s full-scale invasion has generated largescale violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law (IHRL), with devastating consequences for persons with disabilities. Reports by disability organisations document killings and injuries caused by indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, torture and sexual violence, destruction of homes and loss of accessible shelter, food and medical care. Systematic attacks on healthcare facilities and other infrastructure have had disproportionate impacts on people who rely on such services for survival. 

Disability rarely operates in isolation. Age, gender, displacement, institutionalisation, ethnicity, geography, and socio-economic status all shape exposure to harm, the ability to flee, and access to remedies. Ableism and disability-based discrimination are compounded by anti-Roma prejudice, homophobia, ageism, and rural marginalisation of youth, with women and girls with disabilities at heightened risk of gender-based violence and exclusion from healthcare among other barriers. 

Institutionalised persons face acute risks. When Russian forces advanced, many institutions did not or could not evacuate persons with disabilities, leaving them trapped in facilities where their autonomy and freedom of movement were restricted, they were separated from the public and support networks, their location and disability status were easily visible to perpetrators, and they were reliant on heads of institutions who could be replaced or coerced by the occupying forces. Children with disabilities were especially vulnerable to deportation and illegal adoption. 

The two-week siege of Borodyanka residential hospital, housing hundreds of men with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, illustrates how institutional settings can be sites of extreme abuses that still fail to translate into disability-inclusive accountability. After the facility was stormed on 2 March 2022 by Russian forces, including Chechen units, a military encampment was established and a siege ensued that resulted in the deaths of more than 13 residents with disabilities (another 20 residents died after relocation). During this period, residents were forced to strip naked, their belongings were looted, they lacked access to adequate food, water and medicine, and were used as human shields to minimise return fire from Ukrainian forces – conduct amounting to multiple war crimes. Even in this emblematic case, however, legal processes reproduced paternalistic structures that enabled harm and ensure that persons with disabilities inside institutions remain structurally invisible as legal, rights-bearing subjects.

Invisibilisation of Disability in Accountability Processes: Domestic and International Dimensions

Many of the acts described above clearly constitute war crimes and, in some contexts, crimes against humanity. Under IHL, persons with disabilities who are civilians or otherwise protected are entitled to special respect and protection, and parties must avoid adverse distinction based on disability in the treatment of those under their control. Inclusive IHL analysis has underlined that the application of core rules on distinction, proportionality, and precautions must consider foreseeable barriers and risks faced by persons with disabilities. Under IHRL, Ukraine and other states are bound by the CRPD, which requires protection from violence and access to justice including during armed conflict. 

Ukraine’s obligation under international law to investigate and prosecute crimes against persons with disabilities is firmly grounded in overlapping IHL, IHRL and international criminal law (ICL) frameworks. Articles 4, 13, and 16 of the CRPD require state parties to eliminate barriers to participation, ensure effective investigations and prosecutions, including through procedural and age-appropriate accommodations, and provide protection from violence. UNSC Resolution 2475 further urges states to end impunity and ensure accountability. Under domestic law, Ukraine can prosecute many of these acts under war crimes and crimes against humanity provisions in the Criminal Code, while also drawing on anti-discrimination and disability-rights legislation and policy documents. 

Despite extensive national and international efforts to ensure accountability, persons with disabilities are under-represented and poorly visible. While the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants related to unlawful transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied areas to the Russian Federation, explicitly referencing hundreds “taken from orphanages and children’s care homes”, public statements made by the ICC Prosecutor do not disaggregate affected children by disability status or analyse how disability and institutionalisation shaped the commission of crimes. These and other relevant factors should be reflected in investigative priorities, victim-witness protection, and charging strategies. 

Domestically, Ukraine has registered over 20,000 war crimes cases, with hundreds of indictments and convictions, but there is no comprehensive data on how many cases involve survivors with disabilities as direct victims or witnesses. It is clear, however, that a lack of awareness and specialisation in investigating crimes against persons with disabilities means that such crimes lack prioritisation. Without specific attention throughout the investigation to crimes against persons with disabilities, investigations risk replicating the mistakes of past international practice in sidelining persons with disabilities.   

The trial of Daniil Martynov for crimes at Borodyanka exemplifies this accountability gap: none of the resident victims were recognised as victims or testified at trial; the court relied primarily on the testimony of the director, the only person granted formal “victim” status, and staff. The residents with disabilities, who were most exposed to siege conditions and used as human shields, appeared in the judgment as passive, unnamed victims, with minimal analysis of how disability and institutionalisation shaped their experience and resulting harms. This is more than a missed opportunity; it replicates the denial of legal capacity that CRPD Articles 12–13 seek to overturn and keeps disability from being recognised as a legally relevant factor in analysing intent or targeting, or in reparations. 

A recurrent fault line is legal capacity and accessibility: when disability is treated as incapacity, systems default to proxy voices and procedural exclusion that deny a voice to persons with disabilities. Child survivors with disabilities are disproportionately impacted when the disability-based presumption of incapacity is compounded by virtue of their age and/or gender. These are major factors in the significant under-reporting of crimes during the war, and are exacerbated by discrimination and stigma; loss of support networks; low trust in law enforcement agencies, and inaccessible avenues for reporting crimes to law enforcement. 

Towards Disability-Inclusive Justice in Ukraine: Reflections and Preliminary Recommendations 

The “accountability void” for crimes committed against persons with disabilities, and their ongoing marginalisation in accountability processes, is legally untenable under IHL, ICL and IHRL. Disability-inclusive, survivor-centred justice in Ukraine is not a matter of policy preference – it is required by the CRPD, the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, and by states’ commitments under UNSC Resolution 2475. Four sets of reforms are both practical and necessary.

1. Make Disability a Strategic Priority in Investigations and Prosecutions

Ukraine has demonstrated that it can rapidly improve practice once a category of harm is prioritised, as seen in recent efforts to investigate and prosecute conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) amid escalating hostilities. A similar shift is required for crimes against and affecting persons with disabilities. The next update of the Office of the Prosecutor General’s Strategic Plan on International Crimes (2023-2025) should explicitly commit to prioritising such crimes, including by: integrating consent-based disability indicators into investigative, outreach and interviewing procedures; ensuring accessibility and specialised support; disaggregating war crimes and crimes against humanity data by disability alongside gender and age; and developing disability-sensitive policies and practice. 

2. Treat Deinstitutionalisation as an Accountability Imperative

Large residential institutions have been scenes of foreseeable atrocity, concentrating those most dependent on services and least able to flee. Under the CRPD, states are obliged to transition to community-based support and to prevent segregation and isolation. Donors and recovery planners who finance the reconstruction or expansion of such institutions are not neutral; they are helping to recreate sites of heightened vulnerability and potential future crimes. Conditioning finance on community-based services, accessible housing, and meaningful participation by OPDs would align Ukraine’s recovery with its rights obligations as well as EU legal and policy frameworks mandatory for accession, and reduce the structural drivers of future harm.

3. Embed Disability Perspectives in Investigative Standards, Not Just ad hoc Training

For all the rhetoric about “leaving no one behind”, most atrocity crimes investigations assume an able-bodied victim. The result is predictable: disability-specific harms are not recognised; institutions and families speak on behalf of survivors; and disability does not appear in strategic documents, charging narratives, or court judgments, even where it clearly shaped conflict-related harms and their lasting impacts. Investigators and prosecutors, in particular, should be trained to implement disability-inclusive processes and develop standardised procedures that align with existing operational guidance, address fundamental and persistent barriers to accessing justice, and thereby better ensure the rights of persons with disabilities. Their experiences, OPDs’ expertise, and lessons already learned in Ukraine can also help address the international void in disability-sensitive investigative guidance for practitioners.

4. Recognise Persons with Disabilities and OPDs as Rights-bearing Rarticipants

Perhaps most importantly, persons with disabilities and OPDs must be recognised and engaged as rights-bearing participants in accountability processes, not as passive objects of protection. The CRPD requires states to ensure their participation in legal proceedings, including at investigative and preliminary stages. Practically, this means building in participation by design: consultation with OPDs on investigative strategies and priorities at minimum; accessible public information on rights and proceedings; and dedicated resourcing for accommodations.

Ukraine’s experience already shows both the scale of the problem and the possibility of change. If disability continues to be treated as background context rather than central to conflict-related violence and deprivation, and legal remedies are divorced from ongoing systemic injustice, “survivor-centred” accountability will reproduce hierarchies of exclusion, in Ukraine and beyond. Treating persons with disabilities as rights-holders is not only a legal obligation – disability-inclusive justice is essential to truly understanding and ensuring a complete record of crimes committed during conflict, as well as rebuilding more just societies.