UN Ukraine Inquiry Commission Secretariat Shrinks Due to Liquidity Crisis

This was reported by a member of the commission, Indian human rights activist Vrinda Grover, in an interview with Ukrinform.

“Due to the ongoing liquidity crisis and the hiring freeze at the United Nations, our Commission has suffered significant losses. Our Secretariat originally consisted of 24 members, but now it is down to 13. If a vacancy in the Secretariat becomes available, we cannot appoint a new staff member to that position,” she said.

While investigators and other staff are still based at the Vienna secretariat, some key roles, such as the chief investigator, legal adviser and child rights specialist, have been lost, Grover said.

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“When the Secretariat's size is reduced so significantly and key positions are unavailable, the work does not stop and its rigour does not diminish. However, the range of issues we can examine is likely to be affected and the workload of Secretariat members is significantly increased,” the Commissioner added.

She also stressed that the lack of financial resources had a direct impact on the ability of Commission members to travel. As a result, during the third mandate – from March 2024 to March 2025 – no Commission member visited Ukraine. According to Grover, while technology allows for remote and hybrid meetings, online meetings with the Ukrainian authorities have their limitations. Nevertheless, Commission investigators continued to travel to Ukraine.

“As a Commission, we have previously also travelled to Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine. However, during the third mandate, due to budgetary constraints, we, the Commissioners, were unable to visit Ukraine. We decided that it made more sense to allocate limited resources to investigators for travel. Investigators conduct both face-to-face meetings and remote interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as with a wide range of other interlocutors, including civil society organisations,” the human rights activist said.

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She added that the Commission also receives information from the Ukrainian authorities. “All the information collected is then filtered and analyzed. We conduct a thorough and rigorous verification process to ensure that the information, evidence or testimony that we receive is reliable, corroborated and authentic,” the UN Commission member explained.

As reported by Ukrinform, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2022 to investigate all alleged human rights violations and abuses, as well as violations of international humanitarian law in the context of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The commission consists of Eric Moze (Chairman), Pablo de Greif and Vrinda Grover.