The Hub seeks to support lawyers and human rights defenders from countries of the former Soviet Union (further FSU) to enhance human rights accountability and bridge the impunity gap in the region.

In order to increase the impact of legal actions, the hub links training opportunities, individual mentorship and virtual pan-Eurasian networks.

Through this ecosystem of complementary resources, the hub fosters a sense of community among human rights defenders and lawyers, and serves as a driving force towards the greater and more effective use of universal jurisdiction, targeted sanctions and climate justice.

Domestic prosecutorial mechanisms in third countries, with functioning and independent judicial systems, seem to be a reasonable option for victims, their lawyers and civil society organizations. The United States, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have already adopted Magnitsky sanctions or similar laws, and the European Commission has recently pledged to forth a European Magnitsky act to target perpetrators of human rights abuses.

While many civil society actors from the FSU regional know about targeted sanctions, fragile understanding about how the tool works in practice, poor drafting of sanctions requests and lack of quality supporting evidence have led to the unsuccessful implementation of this tool. In fact, beyond the case of Sergey Magnitsky, sanctions have been used to a very limited degree in the FSU region and include only a small number of perpetrators from the North Caucasus and Ukraine. The Human Rights Impact Hub therefore seeks to boost the use of this promising accountability instrument.

In the relatively new and constantly-evolving field of climate/environmental litigation, lawyers from the FSU region may need guidance to navigate complex domestic civil, administrative, criminal, and constitutional frameworks related to the environment. Supporting them to analyse international environmental law, to understand the environmental dimension of human rights law and to identify litigation entry points in EU law will trigger the creation of innovative legal approaches to environmental issues. There is therefore the potential not only to revive the FSU local climate justice movement but also to launch an unprecedented wave of climate/environmental litigation in the region.

By being part of the hub's impact-driven ecosystem, you will join forces with other lawyers and human rights defenders to think creatively and test underexplored accountability instruments to initiate out-of-the box legal actions. Thanks to your valuable human rights or environmental experience, you will reinforce our community of change-oriented individuals. Click here to download the application form and become a driving force towards fulfilling the hub's common objective of ending impunity for grave crimes in the FSU region.