A joint initiative between the University of Bergen
and CMI – Chr. Michelsen Institute
The continuation of Russian colonial policies in Ukraine.
Photo: The Collection of war.ukraine.ua In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, citing the unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children.
More than 19 000 cases have been documented so far, while Russia claims to have “evacuated” more than 700 000 children. To date, 388 children have been returned to Ukraine. These forcible transfers are accompanied by systematic re-education and indoctrination efforts in the Russian language and ideology.
Forcible deportation, ongoing since the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, is not a new phenomenon, but deeply rooted in Russia’s colonial practices. Ukrainians and the Ukrainian language were targeted under both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
In this event, we will highlight the forcible deportation and indoctrination of Ukrainian children by Russia; examine accountability under international criminal law, including the Genocide Convention, and provide a historical perspective on Russia’s colonial policies.
The panel, moderated by Liliia Oprysk, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen, will feature:
Svitlana Arabadzhy is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, and Associate Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology, Mariupol State University.
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Yulia Ioffe is an Associate Professor in Law in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) at University College London (UCL).
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Ingunn Lunde is Professor of Russian at the University of Bergen. Her research interests include sociocultural linguistics, language policy, East Slavic medieval culture, and contemporary Ukrainian literature.
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Gaiane Nuridzhanian is a lawyer from Ukraine, specialised in public international law, human rights law, and international criminal law.
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Liliia Oprysk is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen. Liliia is Ukrainian. Her main research interest is digital copyright law.
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Svitlana Arabadzhy is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, and Associate Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology, Mariupol State University.
Arabadzhy’s current research project “Becoming Greek South of Ukraine, 1774-2021: The History of Ukraine through its Greek Minority Between Local and Transnational Contexts (UAGREEKS)”, has received funding through the MSCA4Ukraine project and is financed by the European Union. She is currently working on a monograph on the history of Mariupol as a Port City.
Yulia Ioffe is an Associate Professor in Law in the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) at University College London (UCL).
Before joining UCL, Dr. Ioffe was a postdoctoral fellow in children’s rights law at Queen Mary University of London and a researcher in international refugee law at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford.
Dr. Ioffe also clerked for H.E. Judge James R. Crawford at the International Court of Justice and worked at the UNHCR Representation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UNHCR Regional Representation for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, and a New York litigation firm.
Ingunn Lunde is Professor of Russian at the University of Bergen. Her research interests include sociocultural linguistics, language policy, East Slavic medieval culture, and contemporary Ukrainian literature.
Ingunn Lunde is the author of Verbal Celebrations: Kirill of Turov’s Homiletic Rhetoric and its Byzantine Sources (Harrassowitz 2001), Language on Display: Writers, Fiction and Linguistic Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (Edinburgh UP 2018) and Fragmenter av fortid: Historiens rolle i russisk samtidslitteratur (Dreyer 2019) and editor/co-editor of twelve books.
She was managing editor of Scando-Slavica (2016–2022) and is founder and editor-in-chief of the book series Slavica Bergensia (2000–). Lunde is actively involved in outreach activities for Norwegian audiences, ranging from public talks and feature articles to podcasts, panels, media appearances and interviews. She is also a literary translator from Ukrainian and Russian into Norwegian.
Gaiane Nuridzhanian is a lawyer from Ukraine, specialised in public international law, human rights law, and international criminal law.
She hold an LLM degree in international law from University of Cambridge and a PhD degree in law from University College London. She has previously worked as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights and Council of Europe, and as a Visiting Legal Professional at the International Criminal Court.
Liliia Oprysk is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen. Liliia is Ukrainian. Her main research interest is digital copyright law.
Bergen Global is a joint initiative between the University of Bergen and Chr. Michelsen Institute that addresses global challenges.
