History is a process which constantly unfolds, requires analysis and consideration. In the RIGHTS NOW! Human Rights Programme, we will try to trace the causal relationships between the processes launched by the Russian aggression and make sense of their impact on our future. 

This year, the events of the RIGHTS NOW! Human Rights Programme will be held on 1–6 June. In the morning, the programme will be opened by the Coffee with Partners section. We have invited civil society organisations and initiatives to work on this discussion platform together. On International Children’s Day, experts from the DOCU/CLUB Network and NGO Magnolia will discuss the protection of children from sexual violence on the internet and announce the beginning of a joint information campaign. Crimea.Realities, a Radio Liberty project, will demonstrate the documentary Quiet Deportation about Russia displacing Crimean Tatars from the occupied peninsula. As part of the Coffee with Partners, there will be a premiere of The Rear, a documentary by Ukrayinska Pravda, which is about two sides of a large country’s life during the full-scale war. Together with the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, we will consider the problems in the legislation about collaboration with the enemy. And with the Principle Human Rights Centre for the Military, we will look at how society and the government must support the carers of wounded veterans. The Coffee with Partners section will end with a conversation about the challenges and opportunities faced by the youth in the process of Ukraine’s decolonisation; the conversation is prepared by NGO Stan.

In the afternoon, we invite the audience to attend the events of the Ukraine War Archive, a project by NGO Docudays and Infoscope which collects and catalogues digital materials of the great war. In this section, you will find out whether Russia can be punished for environmental crimes and what we should do right now to preserve the memory of this war. We will discuss how hate speech is related to war crimes and learn about the opportunities provided by artificial intelligence in the fight against misinformation. A special event in the programme is a presentation of the new instruments of the Ukraine War Archive digital platform. You will learn how to quickly find the required material among the stored terabytes of files about the great war, how to build connections between events and geographical locations. The Archive team will also share how they trace and save the original posts and how they study Russian propaganda.

The Living Library section invites you to talk about our identity. This year we are organising it in a new format and offer you to attend open readings, which are public moderated conversations. You will learn how the Ukrainian identity in history, literature, music, art, and cinema can help us realise our belonging to the European family, disprove the Russian myths about ‘brotherly nations’, and communicate the truth about the war in Ukraine and Russia’s crimes.

In the evenings, you can attend the public discussions of RIGHTS NOW!. The programme will open with the event Our support abroad. How to convince the world to continue helping Ukraine, where we will think about how to inspire and unite the public in other countries to help Ukraine. Even after our victory in the war, Russia will continue to be a threat for Ukrainian and European security. In the conversation Living next to a terrorist state: How Ukraine can stand its ground, we will learn how security alliances can help Ukraine and other countries make it impossible for aggressor countries to attack their neighbours. How should educational, public institutions, private businesses change in order to meet the challenges of wartime and postwar economy? This will be the subject of the conversation Working for the future despite the war: How to develop human potential. The RIGHTS NOW! programme will continue with the public conversation Ten years of the war that has been going on for three centuries: What historic lessons Ukraine and the world must learn. In it, we will discuss the historic lessons which Ukraine and the world must learn to prevent the aggression from recurring. The Human Rights Programme will end with the conversation Forced deportation: How do we return and rehabilitate the kidnapped Ukrainian children. In it, we will discuss the challenges on the path to returning deported and forcibly relocated Ukrainian children, talk about who is responsible for returning the children, reintegrating and rehabilitating them, and how to make the work of these institutions effective.

All the events in the RIGHTS NOW! Human Rights Programme will be held in Zhovten Cinema in the Dolce Vita hall with sign language interpretation. Access to all the events is free of charge. You will soon be able to find the schedule of all the events in the Human Rights Programme on our website.

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The 21st Docudays UA is held with the support of the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the US Embassy in Ukraine, International Media Support, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine, the Embassy of Estonia in Ukraine, the Polish Institute in Kyiv, Institut français d'Ukraine, Danish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre in Kyiv, and the Embassy of Hungary in Kyiv. The opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments or organisations of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively on the authors of the publication.