Supporting Survivors of Torture and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Ukraine: How to Improve Medico-Legal Documentation and Access to Justice

By Physicians for Human Rights

Survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and rigorous medico-legal documentation is essential to offer survivors a pathway to justice, with standardized forensic medical evaluations playing a key role in documenting and corroborating accounts of sexual violence and torture. To support Ukrainian government officials, civil society, and international partners in building systems to support survivors, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) assessed the medico-legal documentation pathway in Ukraine to identify opportunities to strengthen systems to center survivors’ well-being, autonomy, and access to remedies.

Physicians for Human Rights assessed the medico-legal documentation pathway in Ukraine to identify opportunities to strengthen systems to center survivors’ well-being, autonomy, and access to remedies.

Building on the numerous efforts by Ukrainian authorities and their partners to address challenges to medico-legal documentation, this policy brief outlines current obstacles that impede justice and healing for survivors and sets forth actionable opportunities for the Ukrainian government and other stakeholders for reform. The recommendations put forward in the brief emphasize the need to expand the pool of qualified professionals authorized to conduct forensic medical evaluations in cases of conflict-related sexual violence and torture. They also call for legislative reforms to empower survivors in the justice process, the development of standardized medico-legal documentation tools, and the implementation of capacity-building initiatives to ensure trauma-informed, survivor-centered approaches. Together, these efforts can transform the experience of survivors as they seek remedy and reparation and ultimately facilitate greater accountability and healing.

New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 2024. 10p.