International Law and Fundamental Human Rights - Ensuring Accountability for the Downing of Flight MH 17

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) started in January 2020 its work on the draft report entitled: “Ensuring accountability for the downing of flight MH 17†(rapporteur Titus Corlatean, SOC, Romania). The future report will have as main task to inquire about the extent to which countries have carried out investigations required under the European Convention on Human Rights and co-operated with one another as instructed by the United Nations Security Council and to make appropriate recommendations. Essentially, the facts under investigation are related to the shot down of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH 17 over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, during a decisive phase of the conflict between separatists, backed by Russia, and the Ukrainian military. A first Introductory memorandum was presented by the rapporteur in January 2020 to the PACE Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, underlining the key elements of his mandate for ensuring the accountability for the shot down of flight MH 17 and the terrible loss of the life of 283 passengers and 15 crew members. The committee accepted to declassify the memorandum. The main initial conclusions and the guidelines for the future work to finalize the report are presented as follows.