Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: No Uncharted Territory – The ICC’s and TFV’s Role in the Ecosystem of Justice for Victims in Ukraine

[Deborah Ruiz Verduzco is  Executive Director of the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV) at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Prior to her appointment, she was Director of the Secretariat of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. She previously led the Civil Society Development Department at the International Commission on Missing Persons, served as Special Assistant to two Presidents of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. She holds degrees in international relations, diplomacy and human rights, as well as a PhD in international law.

Franziska Eckelmans joined the TFV as a Legal Advisor, and served as Acting Executive Director between September 2022 and April 2023. She was previously Legal Counsel to the Registrar of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a Legal Officer with EULEX Kosovo, and Legal Adviser to the Appeals Division of the ICC and to the Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. She has been a member of the coordination team of the German-speaking Working Group on International Criminal Law since 2005.

Maria Emilia Gelmi is an Assistant Legal Officer at the TFV. She previously worked with the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia on peace process verification and transitional justice issues and with non-governmental organisations in Argentina on human rights and legal assistance programmes for refugees and asylum seekers. She holds a Master’s degree in International Studies and International Human Rights Law.

Anas A. Qazi holds an LL.M. in Public International Law with a specialisation in international criminal law from Stockholm University in Sweden. Prior to his current role as an Individual Contractor at the TFV, he worked for a defence team as well as within the judiciary at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the ICC.]

Introduction

Significant domestic, regional and international initiatives are underway to ensure accountability for international crimes committed in the situation in Ukraine and meaningful reparations for victims. Together, these initiatives have the potential to form an Ecosystem of Justice for Victims in Ukraine.

That Ecosystem is taking concrete legal and institutional form not only at the national but also at the international plane, on which this contribution focuses. The Register of Damage for Ukraine, established in 2023, has recorded approximately 150,000 claims. The Convention establishing an International Claims Commission for Ukraine opened for signature in December 2025 to enable determinations for compensation of registered claims, with a compensation fund envisaged as a third component. In parallel, broad state support has emerged for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The current focus of international actors therefore rests on aggression and on compensation.  

The International Criminal Court (ICC), which exercises jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes other than the crime of aggression, committed on Ukrainian territory since 20 February 2014, forms part of this Justice Ecosystem, and has issued arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in relation to the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. The ICC also brings to the Justice Ecosystem its reparative framework and practice, through the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV), which speaks to dimensions of harm that compensation alone cannot reach: recognition, rehabilitation and participation.

In 2026, the TFV initiated a preliminary assessment to identify its areas of intervention in Ukraine. Drawing on the practice of the ICC and on the TFV’s experience across multiple situations, this contribution reflects on the three elements that experience suggests are essential to meaningful reparative engagement.

Justice and reparations at the ICC

Reparative justice, as a cornerstone of the Rome Statute, obliges those responsible for Rome Statute crimes to repair the harm caused to victims (Article 75). To give effect to this, particularly in cases involving indigent convicted persons, the TFV was established to mobilise resources from States and private donors, make visible the plight of victims, and design and implement reparative measures for victims of crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction and their families, as defined in Rule 85 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Such reparative measures may be implemented based on Court-ordered reparations after an individual’s conviction, or they may be put in place to benefit specific groups of affected victims in situations under ICC investigation or prosecution, usually delivered by the TFV independently of ongoing proceedings (non-judicial programmes known as assistance programmes).

Fundamentally, measures under the ICC’s reparative justice system are not limited to monetary compensation. They address persisting physical, psychological, socioeconomic, and material forms of harm, including through satisfaction and memorial measures that reflect community and moral harm, and have reached a wide range of victims, including former child soldiers, survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, victims of torture and religious persecution, and displaced populations.

Recognition and public validation of harm suffered

Recognition of victims sits at the heart of the ICC’s reparative jurisprudence, which corresponds to the profound value that victims place on having their suffering acknowledged. Recognition is not a single act but an essential part of each step of the reparative justice process – from the framing of charges, through the judicial determination of facts and responsibility, to the design of reparations, eligibility processes, and the symbolic and memorial measures that follow.

Recognition operates at different levels. It may be individual, where a specific victim is identified as a person who suffered harm from Rome Statute crimes; or collective, where the crimes and the general patterns of harm are acknowledged without every victim being named. The way charges and judgments are framed therefore matters: broader framing enables broader recognition later.

Recognition also has different aspects. It is offered by courts, such as the ICC, through convictions, sentences and reparation orders that constitute the formal finding of what happened, placing accountability with the perpetrators. It is then carried forward through the reparations implemented on the basis of those findings, including satisfaction measures such as memorials designed by victims, plaques, ceremonies and public acknowledgements. By way of example, in Al Mahdi (Reparation Order, para. 90), the Chamber ordered symbolic measures expressly to give “public recognition of the moral harm suffered” by the community. Recognition is also offered outside the judicial context: by fact-finding initiatives of the international community, by administrative reparation mechanisms, such as the Register of Damage and the future Claims Commission, and by the TFV’s non-judicial programmes.

The reparative weight of such recognition is reflected in the testimony of a victim in the Katanga proceedings:

“By giving us this reparation, it shows that the ICC has recognised what we suffered even if it is not comparable to what we lost. This is justice […].”

Recognition by perpetrators is a further dimension, and one that cannot always be attained. Denial by perpetrators is a feature of the current Ukrainian context, and it can impede the victims’ sense of justice, as another victim in Katanga observed:

“I say that there was no justice because it was Germain Katanga who was accused as a war criminal, but in The Hague, he denied everything and said that he was sent by others […].”

Recognition can therefore be achieved in many forms, recognising that not every form will be available or appropriate in every context. Such acknowledgement is most meaningful when it is publicly accessible, while accepting victims’ choices about their own visibility, and understandable to the victims themselves. What victims do with the various forms of recognition available to them is deeply personal. Only they can determine when, how, and to whom they choose to identify themselves as victims of the crimes. The reparative justice framework cannot prescribe that process; its role is to offer anchors that victims can draw on, in their own time and on their own terms.

In the Ukrainian context, those anchors may help transform trauma from an individual experience of shame or isolation into part of a shared and acknowledged history of collective harm; a safeguard against narratives that obscure or deny what victims have suffered, and a way of preventing silence and the transmission of unresolved trauma across generations.  

Healing minds and bonds

Reparations also require the healing of minds and bonds. In the TFV’s experience, psychological and psycho-social interventions are critical to long-term recovery, yet they are among the most frequently disregarded forms of reparative support: by victims themselves, by their communities, and by states.

This is not unique to ICC situations. In the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars, victims lived with untreated trauma because psychological care was usually neither offered nor accepted. Similar patterns persist in many contexts where the ICC works today: psychological support carries stigma, is unfamiliar, or is set aside in favour of material measures. Victims themselves may not seek it; communities may not see why it matters; and states often fund primarily first-response or short-term support, treating trauma as an acute condition rather than a long-term harm whose consequences extend well beyond the period of immediate crisis.

The TFV’s experience demonstrates the crucial role of psychological and psycho-social interventions. In Katanga, beneficiaries in Ituri Province who were initially hesitant to engage, ultimately took part in group therapy, about 20 years after the crimes occurred. The expert’s report concluding the intervention indicates that only three months of group therapy resulted in a considerable reduction in post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. In the TFV’s programme in the Central African Republic (CAR), survivors of sexual violence reported the importance of interventions for their sense of self, giving them the courage to re-engage in productive and family life.  Similarly, the TFV also  integrated positive masculinity approaches into its programming, working with partners of female survivors to build understanding of the trauma suffered and its lasting consequences.

Particularly in relation to crimes involving children, reparative measures should promote not only physical recovery, but also psychological recovery and social reintegration of child victims. As highlighted by the Trial Chamber in Ntaganda (Reparation Order, para. 55), such reintegration should take place in an environment which supports the child’s health, self-respect, and dignity. In Ongwen, the Chamber also recognised the “psychological pain and frustration” felt by families following abductions, as well as the “constant worry and profound agony” caused by the absence of information about their relatives’ well-being. In response to the TFV’s proposal  for implementation of the Ntaganda reparations, ICC judges emphasised the importance of tailoring reparative measures to the needs of each beneficiary and ensuring the involvement of psychologists with expertise in trauma.

In the Ukrainian context, this dimension of reparative justice will demand time and sustained funding, and its returns will not be visible immediately, but will be central to Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction, and for the next generation. Trauma left untreated puts limits on individuals and society, and does not stay within those who carry it: it passes to children raised by parents whose harm was never addressed. This has been validated by the ICC judges who have recognised in the Ntaganda andOngwen cases the transgenerational harm caused by crimes against humanity and war crimes. Short-term programmes, however responsive in the moment, cannot reach the depth at which mass crimes do their damage. Psychological and psychosocial care is therefore not an optional addition to reparations in Ukraine. These interventions will help determine whether the harm of this war ends with those who were harmed or extends into the lives of those not yet born.

Meaningful participation

Mass atrocity crimes silence victims, weaken trust, and strip individuals and communities of control over their own lives and futures. Reparation that does not work towards returning that agency is incomplete, however generous its material content may be. Participation is therefore not a procedural feature of reparative justice but central to its reparative effect: it is through inclusion in the processes that concern them that victims re-engage with the societies in which they live.

At the ICC, this begins in the courtroom. Victims participate formally in proceedings through their legal representatives – a recognition of their standing before the ICC. But the work of returning agency goes considerably beyond the trial. Reparations require room for victims and communities to shape what reparation should look like for them, in their context, and on their own terms. As the Trial Chamber highlighted in Ntaganda (Reparation Order, para. 45), participatory processes also allow reparations programmes to better reflect the social, cultural, and practical realities of affected communities.

Inclusion goes beyond consultations. Consultation asks victims what they think about a process often already designed; inclusion makes them part of the design. The TFV’s practice has moved increasingly toward inclusion, with judges establishing meaningful participation as a principle of reparations. Community engagement during the design phase, starting before the reparation orders are issued, local participatory committees, and partnerships with civil society organisations have been used in situations and cases including Ongwen, Al Mahdi, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, with attention to cultural, gender, age, and intersectional sensitivities. As the Lubanga and Ntaganda reparation orders underscore, accessible communication, voluntariness, informed consent, and care to avoid re-traumatisation are preconditions for meaningful participation.

Inclusion has impact across time and processes. In consultations conducted in the context of the Al Hassan case, victims expressed confidence in the new reparations process precisely because of their prior engagement with the TFV in Al Mahdi. This shows that trust, once built, carries forward. Active participation is associated with psychological and social returns: the Katanga evaluation found that beneficiaries, all actively included in the reparations process, reported greater psychological well-being and higher trust in international institutions than non-beneficiaries.

In the Ukrainian context, the question is therefore not whether to consult civil society. Ukrainian civil society is already organised, internationally connected, and operationally experienced, and Ukrainian authorities seek to consult civil society – a strength compared to other ICC contexts. The question is whether the international architecture taking shape around Ukraine will treat Ukrainian victims and communities as authors of what reparation should be, or as channels through which institutionally-designed measures are delivered. Sustained financial and institutional support for community-led participation is part of the answer; equally important is a willingness of international actors to let go of design choices that local actors are better placed to make.

Conclusion

In Ukraine, the scale and nature of the crimes demand a response beyond compensation alone. The Justice Ecosystem taking shape through international bodies around Ukraine – the Register of Damage, the future Claims Commission, a Special Tribunal, and the ICC’s criminal process – is designed to address indispensable dimensions of justice by documenting harm, attributing responsibility, and providing compensation. These are necessary but not sufficient. Recognition, rehabilitation and meaningful participation are distinct dimensions of reparative justice that allow reparative measures not only to acknowledge the past but to shape the future, laying the foundation for social cohesion and long-term recovery. The TFV is currently determining its areas of intervention in Ukraine. Its contribution will lie in ensuring that the dimensions of recognition, rehabilitation and participation become central to Ukraine’s Justice Ecosystem.

Photo attribution: by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash