STAGES AND NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF THE UOC (2014-2024)

Despite the huge number of violations of the rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, international protection of this denomination shows the highest systemic results today. It should be noted that the UOC, despite its critical situation within Ukraine, is currently a leader in effective protection at the international level, and the agenda of violations of the rights of believers is on the agenda of all major structures of the international human rights mechanism, whose mandates include consideration of human rights violations by states. 

This situation has arisen due to the fact that since 2016, international human rights organisations that have systematic resources and methods of legal work at the diplomatic level have joined the work to protect the rights of the UOC. At the same time, it is significant that such work was carried out much deeper than declarative statements, which are usually limited to most well-known human rights organisations. In fact, all official human rights regulations of specific international organisations were covered: The UN Human Rights Council, the UN Human Rights Committee, UN Special Rapporteurs, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the European Parliament. These authorities received not only statements, but also human rights reports and complaints; written reports with a detailed list of violations of the rights of UOC believers with relevant evidence and proper verification were published on the websites and in the documentation systems of these organisations. Explanatory meetings were held with representatives of these organisations, both at the level of management and leading specialists, which always make a significant contribution to the real awareness of such organisations of the problem.   Thus, this made it possible to create a significant awareness of the situation of the UOC in these institutions and prevent many serious problems in 2014-2018. It is thanks to this that the first wave of violent seizures of churches ended in 2016, and the authorities received sufficient signals about the unacceptability of such relations with the UOC. However, opponents of the UOC implemented a new project to obtain the Tomos from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, after which the wave of violence was launched according to a different scheme and at a new level.

With the creation of the OCU, a new problem was the formation of a negative systemic policy on the part of the state towards the UOC, which was embodied in massive hate speech and legal decisions of local governments to "ban the UOC", appeals to terminate the rights of the UOC to the Pochayiv and Kyiv-Pechersk Lavras. These decisions, as well as the rhetoric of politicians, formed a trend of increasing aggression against the UOC. However, in the first years after the Tomos was granted, this policy did not gain its full force, as planned by the systemic opponents of the UOC, precisely because of the intense response to these problems at the international level. A significant number of international inquiries from human rights organisations were received at the level of regional state administrations, heads of internal affairs bodies, prosecutors, and the Security Service of Ukraine; the inquiries contained warnings about the existence of international monitoring of these problems, justifications for the inadmissibility of discriminatory policies towards UOC believers, and human rights defenders demanded that state bodies provide explanations for almost every violation of the rights of UOC believers, demanded documents, including transcripts of meetings of city and regional councils where the use of discriminatory policies was applied.

Human rights organisations filed applications for the opening of criminal proceedings on the most odious facts of violations of the rights of believers and ensured dialogue with representatives of the state of Ukraine at a high diplomatic level, in the UN, OSCE structures, and the Council of Europe. This systematic work allowed us to effectively curb the political ambitions of the UOC opponents in the years after the Tomos was granted and before the war. In fact, the tactic of inhibiting violence with legal and international response brought results during this period as well.

With the outbreak of war, the situation changed and moved to a new stage. Despite the enormous challenges, increased aggression in society and intensified attacks on UOC structures, international work continued, and the thesis that any violations of the rights of UOC believers would be viewed "through a magnifying glass" at the international level remains real today.

At the same time, it should be understood that international law and the practice of response of international structures do not have tools for direct legal coercion of the state to perform certain actions (with rare exceptions), but sufficient disclosure of violations of the rights of religious organisations, with an appropriate evidence base for such violations, makes it possible to effectively influence the deterrence of the offending state's policy, and in some cases to block the implementation of discriminatory initiatives at the level of central and local authorities. 

This is evidenced by the fact that offences, church seizures, and criminal persecution of believers, which are committed against UOC believers, are currently being carried out with significant documentary legal cover, which makes it difficult to prove at the international level that these actions are illegal. Thus, state bodies that violate the rights of UOC believers seek to justify themselves to international organisations, hiding behind various legal tricks, the refutation of which directly depends on the ability of lawyers and human rights structures to work at the systemic level of international protection.

In other words, international work cannot be replaced by declarative statements that "the rights of the UOC are being violated" on Internet resources friendly to the UOC, or even by letters from foreign lawyers to the Ukrainian parliament. Such actions can only have a temporary short-term effect, as practice shows that opponents of the UOC learn and adjust their tactics in response to international criticism. Thus, the challenges are gradually becoming more complex and require more in-depth defensive work and detailed elaboration of positions.

For example, while in 2014-2016 many churches were seized "head-on" without any justification, later there were no such cases, all seizures occurred after protocols were drawn up on the transfer of the community to another denomination, and proving their fictitiousness in court is not a quick task and not always feasible in principle, including due to documentary errors by religious organisations of the UOC. Similarly, previously, local governments did not work systematically to file lawsuits against the UOC, but only issued "banning" decisions that emphasised the discriminatory attitude towards the denomination. Now, state authorities are looking for "non-discriminatory" legal grounds to deprive UOC organisations of their rights to land and other property, for example, using errors in documents submitted by communities, failure to meet deadlines, and violations in the procedure for preparing documents. Legal departments of state bodies and qualified lawyers engaged by political structures interested in PR on religious issues are now working to create problems for UOC religious organisations. 

Thus, in reality, in order to organise high-quality protection of the UOC at the international level, the current situation requires a detailed study of evidence on the entire array of cases of violations of the UOC's rights, analysis of lawsuits and criminal cases filed against the UOC, evidence submitted in them, as well as constant broadcasting during specific closed and open international regulatory procedures of the facts of violations of the UOC's rights in the format of verified (supported by evidence) statements, complaints, human rights reports and mandatory negotiation work by the UOC.

In view of this, international protection of the UOC will become increasingly difficult, raising the question of whether Orthodox denominations are able to organise sufficiently effective resistance to the systemic discriminatory policy that is constantly transforming, both in relation to the UOC and other Orthodox churches facing similar problems.

Oleg Denisov
head of the human rights organisation
with consultative status with UN ECOSOC
"Public Advocacy"