Reconstructing International Criminal Justice in Real Time

International criminal justice has long been structured around a familiar temporal sequence: first, the violence; later, accountability. Investigations follow ceasefires, indictments come after peace agreements (notwithstanding recent efforts by the ICC to act more proactively in relation to ongoing hostilities), and reparations (if they materialise at all) are relegated to a distant post-conflict future. This model has shaped dominant legal understandings of justice as retrospective, responsibility as primarily criminal and individualised, and redress as something that follows, rather than accompanies, accountability. But what happens when armed conflict does not wait for justice, and justice cannot wait for peace?

This question is particularly acute in protracted armed conflicts, where time is not a neutral feature of accountability but part of justice itself. If recognition, documentation, reparative attention, and procedural safeguards are postponed until a final political settlement, victims may be failed in the present, before evidence disappears or harms deepen. Ukraine’s introduction of urgent interim reparations (providing state-funded payments and support to survivors before the conclusion of criminal proceedings) for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) during an ongoing international armed conflict offers a rare and instructive case.

It challenges the assumption that reparations are necessarily retrospective and post hoc, and invites us to rethink international criminal justice as something that can, and perhaps must, operate while violence is still unfolding. This post argues that Ukraine’s evolving reparations framework represents an important experiment in reconstructing international criminal justice in real time. By decentring prosecutions as the sole vehicle of justice and prioritising survivors’ immediate needs, it brings together legal logics that are usually treated separately: criminal accountability, state responsibility, and transitional justice.

Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Limits of Post-Conflict Justice

CRSV has been extensively documented in Ukraine since the onset of Russia’s aggression in 2014, with a sharp escalation following the full-scale invasion in 2022. Reports by UN bodies, civil society organisations, and investigative journalists (here, here and here) describe patterns of rape, sexual torture, enforced nudity, and sexual enslavement perpetrated primarily by Russian forces against civilians of all genders and ages.

International criminal law recognises these acts as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and, in certain contexts, as genocide. Yet legal recognition alone offers little relief to survivors who face immediate physical injury, psychological trauma, social stigma, displacement, and economic precarity. Criminal proceedings, whether before the ICC or domestic courts, are typically lengthy and uncertain, and are ill-suited to addressing urgent needs that arise while harm is ongoing. Even where convictions are secured, reparations orders may take years to materialise, if at all.

These limits are particularly acute in relation to CRSV, where evidentiary and definitional complexity may make prosecution particularly difficult during ongoing armed conflict. Some war crimes, such as the direct targeting or shooting of civilians, may be comparatively less contested where the underlying facts, victims, and alleged perpetrators can be identified with relative clarity. By contrast, CRSV often requires careful assessment of coercive circumstances, survivor testimony, stigma, and corroborating evidence. Interim reparations can therefore help ensure that survivors receive recognition and support in the present, without displacing the need for impartial, due process-compliant criminal proceedings.

These difficulties are part of a broader temporal gap in international criminal justice. The system was designed primarily to establish responsibility through formal adjudication, rather than to operate as an emergency response system. Its procedures necessarily prioritise due process and legal finality, leaving little space to address the immediate medical, psychological, and economic needs of survivors. For CRSV survivors, this often results in a familiar paradox: justice is promised, but meaningful relief is postponed.

Reparations During Armed Conflict: A Legal and Conceptual Challenge

Under international law, the obligation to provide reparations for human rights violations is well established. Victims of torture and sexual violence are entitled to an effective remedy, and states responsible for internationally wrongful acts are required to make full reparation for the harm caused.

What remains far less settled is when and how these obligations must be fulfilled in the context of an ongoing armed conflict, particularly where the responsible state is unwilling or unable to comply. In Ukraine’s case, Russia bears primary responsibility for the violations, yet it is neither providing reparations nor likely to do so in the (near) future (here).

Ukraine’s response departs from the traditional assumption that reparations must await attribution and enforcement against the responsible state. Instead, it treats reparations as an immediate obligation owed to survivors, to be fulfilled domestically without prejudice to subsequent claims against Russia. In doing so, it challenges the conventional sequencing that places reparations at the end of the accountability process.

The Urgent Interim Reparations Programme: Justice Without Waiting

Against this backdrop, Ukraine launched a pilot Urgent Interim Reparations Programme for survivors of CRSV, developed in cooperation with civil society organisations and international partners. What initially appeared as a limited pilot has since evolved into a large-scale, operational mechanism.

Under the programme, survivors who credibly attest to having experienced CRSV in the context of the armed conflict are eligible for an interim monetary payment, alongside access to medical, psychosocial, and social support services recognised in law. The application process operates on what may be described as a relatively low evidentiary threshold, in that eligibility is not conditioned on the filing of criminal complaints, the existence of convictions, or the identification of a perpetrator, as the mechanism functions through an administrative recognition process designed to provide urgent support independently of criminal proceedings. This design reflects a deliberate effort to prioritise survivors’ autonomy and to reduce re-traumatisation, stigma, and procedural barriers, an approach consistent with the UN Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on Reparations for CRSV.

By late 2024, several hundred survivors had already received interim payments of approximately EUR 3,000, alongside access to medical, psychosocial, and social support services. Some survivors have reported that the reparations process has helped acknowledge the harm they suffered and provided a sense of justice and recognition. According to data published by Ukrainian civil society organisations, applications for interim reparations have been submitted by survivors of different genders and ages, including men and minors, challenging persistent assumptions about the gendered profile of CRSV and reinforcing the need for inclusive, non-stereotypical reparative frameworks.

In November 2024, Ukraine further entrenched this approach by adopting legislation that formally recognises CRSV survivors and establishes a statutory framework for urgent interim reparations. The law entered into force in June 2025, making Ukraine the first state to institutionalise interim reparations for CRSV during an ongoing armed conflict. The legislation has been widely welcomed by international and domestic actors, as a landmark recognition of survivors’ rights (here and here).

At the same time, the legislation conditions access to CRSV survivor status, and thus to reparations, on national security and public safety criteria, allowing reparations to be denied or suspended on the basis of convictions or even ongoing investigations (Article 5(8)-(9) of the Law No 4067-IX). This raises significant human rights and transitional justice concerns, as international law affirms victims’ entitlement to reparations without discrimination, and suspensions based on unresolved investigations risk undermining the presumption of innocence. Without clear safeguards, such criteria may enable politicised exclusions or guilt by association, compounding stigma and exclusion for already marginalised survivors.

Civil Society and the Limits of Interim Reparations

Another notable feature of Ukraine’s approach is the central role played by civil society organisations not only in implementing the reparations framework, but also in co-producing its legal meaning and institutional design. Survivors’ groups, women’s rights organisations, and international NGOs were instrumental in advocating for interim reparations, contributing to the design of procedures, and ensuring that survivors’ experiences informed policy decisions. This approach reflects lessons learned from earlier reparations programmes in post-conflict settings, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Timor-Leste, where delayed or poorly resourced schemes often failed to deliver meaningful redress, in part because survivors were placed at the periphery of the process (here, here and here).

Ukraine’s interim reparations programme is not without shortcomings. The programme has faced significant logistical challenges arising from ongoing hostilities, including difficulties in identifying survivors and ensuring access for those in occupied territories. Moreover, limited resources mean that the reparations provided remain interim in nature and are not yet able to address survivors’ long-term needs comprehensively. A key challenge for both interim and full reparations remains sustainable funding, particularly as responsibility for reparations gradually shifts from donor-funded mechanisms to state institutions. Nonetheless, the programme demonstrates how international legal rules on reparations can be implemented in practice, even in conditions of active hostilities and institutional uncertainty.

Expanding the Meaning of International Criminal Justice

Ukraine’s experience highlights the limits of a justice model that equates accountability exclusively with criminal prosecution. Trials remain important, but they are neither the only nor the most immediate form of justice available to survivors of mass atrocities. It also challenges conventional assumptions about sequencing. By treating reparations as an early response rather than a final outcome, Ukraine’s approach has practical consequences for how states, international institutions, and donors will think about timing, priorities, and resource allocation in other contexts. More broadly, the case raises difficult questions about scale, sustainability, and precedent, including whether similar mechanisms could be adopted elsewhere and how such programmes might be financed.

Finally, the Ukrainian experience must be situated within a rapidly evolving accountability landscape. Alongside ICC proceedings, Ukraine and the Council of Europe have advanced plans for a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, reinforcing a multi-layered approach to justice. While this tribunal will not address CRSV directly, its emergence highlights how different justice mechanisms, criminal, reparative, and political, are developing in parallel rather than consecutively.

At the same time, debates continue over the possible use of frozen Russian state assets to fund reparations, raising complex questions about legality, legitimacy, and distributive justice. These discussions further underscore that reparations are no longer a marginal or purely symbolic concern, but a central component of how international law responds to mass harm in real time.

Conclusion

Ukraine’s urgent interim reparations programme does not replace individual criminal or state responsibility, nor does it resolve the deeper structural challenges of enforcing international law against powerful aggressor states. What it does offer is something both more modest and more radical: recognition that justice delayed can itself be a form of injustice.

As international criminal justice continues to grapple with crises that unfold faster than courts can respond, Ukraine’s experience suggests that reconstruction may already be underway, adapting to the temporal realities of contemporary conflict rather than remaining anchored exclusively to post-conflict models.