On January 23^rd, 2018 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved the Resolution 2198 (2018) on the Humanitarian Consequences of the War in Ukraine, dedicated to the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and corresponding events on the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine in Crimea and the East. The resolution was supported in virtue of the report of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons. Among other things, the resolution condemns the forced abandonment of Crimea by the pro-Ukrainian people, in particular the abandonment of native land by the Crimean Tatars under the pressure of the occupation authorities’ repression as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it points at the cases of enforced disappearances in the occupied Crimea, covers the issue of violation of private property rights by the occupants as violations of international humanitarian law. The resolution calls on the sides of this war to involve the International Committee of the Red Cross in searching for missing persons.

Among other things, the Assembly urges the Russian authorities to:

• ensure the human rights and safety of the entire population of the annexed Crimea;
• lift the ban on the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, as ordered by the International Court of Justice, as well as the entry bans on its leaders, as the Mejlis is the legitimate self-representative organ of the Crimean Tatar community;
• release all Ukrainian prisoners captured and imprisoned in the Russian Federation and in the annexed Crimea in the context of the war, while respecting their rights and freedoms, and, until they are released, allow the monitoring of their state of health and conditions of detention by independent international monitors and international organizations;
• ensure unhindered access to the annexed Crimea to international organizations, international monitoring bodies and human rights non-governmental organizations;
• cease the policy of shifting the demographic composition of the population of annexed Crimea by moving its own population from Russian territory to the peninsula;
• abandon the forcible issue of Russian passports to the Ukrainian citizens living in annexed Crimea and stop the forcible deportation of Ukrainian citizens without Russian passports from the annexed Crimea;
• execute in full all the demands contained in the Assembly Resolutions 1990 (2014), 2034 (2016) and 2063 (2015) to ensure the rights of minorities in Crimea;
• to stop military aggression against Ukraine and restore its territorial integrity

The Assembly urges the Ukrainian authorities to:

• adopt a governmental program of assistance to the families of missing and captured persons during the war in Ukraine, as well as the families of people captured and imprisoned by the Russian authorities in annexed Crimea and on the territory of the Russian Federation in the context of the war;
• provide mechanisms for ensuring the voting rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in all elections, including at local level;
• make available information to the Ukrainian citizens on legalization and international protection procedures for migrants and asylum seekers in Europe;
• ensure the right to adequate housing and resolve housing matters as an integral part of the sustainable solutions for the IDPs, including the adoption of a legal framework for the introduction and implementation of different types of housing programs;
• simplify the procedure for receiving social and pension payments for the IDP;
• introduce administrative procedures for the Ukrainian citizens living in the temporarily occupied territories for the regularization of their civil documentation;
• accord the necessary financial resources to local administrations responsible for assistance to the IDPs and other victims of the war.

The Assembly mentions the possibility of interaction between Ukraine and the Council of Europe Development Bank in issues of protection of rights to accommodation of the IDPs. Together with the Resolution 2198 (2018) the PACE approved the same-named recommendation 2119 (2018), where the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe is asked to provide assistance to Ukraine in the issues of IDPs in the Plan of Actions for Ukraine for 2018-2021 (currently under advisement by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe).

The text of the Resolution 2198 (2018) in English is available at :
http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=24432&lang=en