International human rights foundation Global Rights Compliance (GRC) recently released a new 76-page report revealing information relating to Russian and pro-Russian forces using starvation as a method of warfare against Ukrainian civilians during their 85-day siege of Mariupol City in the South East of Ukraine, between February and May 2022.
GRC’s report, ‘The Hope Left Us’ culminates a 12-month investigation into the siege by its ‘Starvation Mobile Justice Team’ (SMJT), a team of specialist lawyers, OSINT researchers, munitions experts, and others, based in Ukraine supporting the Office of the Prosecutor General to investigate crimes of a specific nature: starvation crimes.
The SMJT analysed over 1.5billion square metres of satellite imagery, photographs, videos, official public statements, and other digital data in their investigation, finding that that sieging forces deliberately attacked and destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, obstructed humanitarian evacuation corridors, and prevented the distribution of humanitarian aid to starving Ukrainians confined in the city. The report concludes that starvation was used as a method of warfare by Russian and pro-Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians during the 85-day siege of the city.
‘The Hope Left Us’ will now form part of a larger dossier of starvation tactics used across Ukraine, to be submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, for further consideration.
To launch ‘The Hope Left Us’, The Communication Group plc designed and implemented a bespoke media awareness campaign to spotlight the report and its findings, and to highlight the intellectual capital of GRC’s team of experts within the SMJT.
Coverage was secured across national and international media, including a variety of online, print, and broadcast coverage, with highlight pieces secured in CNN, Reuters, The Guardian, Forbes, Al Jazeera, Mail Online, The Independent, Deutsche Welle, and The Straits Times. GRC’s Vice President and Director of the Starvation and Humanitarian Crisis Division, Catriona Murdoch, also featured on The Telegraph’s ‘Ukraine: The Latest’ podcast, with a dedicated 40-minute segment and interview about the report.
Additional conversation was driven on social media, with over 1million coverage views on social media, consequent to more than 20,000 likes, reposts, and comments.
