Since Russia’s illegal invasion in 2022, international legal foundation Global Rights Compliance has been supporting Ukraine’s Office of Prosecutor General (OPG) to investigate the growing number of war crimes, including attacks on civilian infrastructure, sexual violence, murder and child abductions. Their Starvation Mobile Justice Team is made up of a combination of expert lawyers, OSINT researchers, and military experts, and has been focussing on starvation-oriented war crimes. The team has assisted several well-known investigations in the course of the war, including the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam, starvation tactics used against the inhabitants of Chernihiv, and the siege of Mariupol.

The Starvation Mobile Justice Team is part of the UK, EU and US-sponsored Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA) which was launched in response to the need of the OPG to increase capacity to investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes perpetrated since the invasion by Russian Forces of Ukraine.

This lecture will discuss the prohibition of the use of deliberate starvation, why it has not been prosecuted before, and how the Starvation Mobile Justice Team have been investigating its use in Ukraine and previously in Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and Tigray, Ethiopia.

Speaker:

Catriona Murdoch

Catriona Murdoch is one of the partners at Global Rights Compliance. Catriona is an ICL expert and recognised as a world-leading expert in the war crime of starvation, associated starvation violations and right to food abuses. With over 15 years' experience in international law, Catriona was called to the Bar of England and Wales and is attached to 1 Crown Office Row Chambers in the UK, she joined GRC in 2016 and made partner in 2020. Catriona is ranked as a leading practitioner in the UK Chambers and Partners and Legal 500 directories and has been involved in GRC’s DPRK work since 2019. She has extensive international litigation experience before the UN IRMCT, ICC and ICTR courts and tribunals, advising on crimes arising out of the Rwandan Genocide, the Iraq war, and the war in the former Yugoslavia. Catriona leads GRC’s Starvation Mobile Justice Team in Ukraine, part of GRC’s dedicated units supporting Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General. This investigation is part of the UK, EU and US-sponsored Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA).