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SUPPORT HUMAN RIGHTS IN UKRAINE
Action beyond observation. Direct, vetted channels dedicated to human rights defense, community rebuilding, and psychological care.
| Category | Initiative | |
|---|---|---|
| Human Rights Advocacy | Center for Civil Liberties | Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization documenting war crimes and advocating for international democratic accountability. |
| Rehabilitation | Superhumans Center | Reintegrating veterans through advanced prosthetics, psychological support, and adaptive sports programs. |
| National Platform | UNITED24 | The official fundraising initiative of Ukraine, directing global donations into medical aid, rebuilding efforts, and humanitarian demining. |
| Civic Rebuilding | Repair Together | Organizing volunteer cleanups in de-occupied villages, combining community rebuilding and rubble clearance with cultural events. |
| Psychological Support | Voices of Children | Providing continuous psychological and psychosocial assistance to children and families affected by the trauma of war. |
| Evacuation & Supply | Vienna Mission for Ukraine (AT) | An Austrian grassroots NGO transporting refugees and procuring 11 kW generators and medical supplies. |
| Frontline Medics | Hospitallers | Volunteer medics saving wounded soldiers and civilians directly from the "zero line" under fire. |
| War Crimes Documentation | TruthHounds | Human rights professionals conducting specialized field investigations and documentation of international crimes for future prosecution. |
| Legal Defense | Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group | Providing vital legal assistance to victims of the war while actively cataloging and investigating systemic human rights abuses. |
OUR SOURCES
The bureaucracy of erasure, fully documented. Evidence synthesized directly from satellite imagery, municipal registries, and official state decrees.
| Category | Source Type | |
|---|---|---|
| Geospatial | UNOSAT (UNITAR) | Preliminary satellite imagery analysis cataloguing over 5,600 damaged or destroyed residential structures in Mariupol. |
| State Registry | Ministry of Construction of the "DPR" | The official unified open-data register of buildings and structures formally designated for demolition by the occupying administration. |
| OSINT / Leaks | "Mariupol Nash" (Our Mariupol) Telegram Channel | Unofficial, leaked spreadsheets circulating among local residents detailing addresses slated for restoration or destruction. |
| Executive Decrees | Acts of the Head of the "DPR" | Official legal dispositions and state orders mandating the allocation, expropriation, and transfer of specific land plots. |
| Aggregated Dataset | Occupation Court Index | A compiled index of 94 local occupation courts operating across the territories, serving as the primary administrative nodes for processing property expropriation cases. |
Beyond the exhibition. Extended archives, other investigations, and deeper datasets documenting the mechanics of occupation.
| Category | Project | |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Archive | Mariupol Urbicide | A verifiable record of the administrative machine dismantling the city. It tracks over 12,800 seized properties and 8,200 occupation court cases to support future restitution claims and criminal accountability. |
| Journalistic Investigation | BBC Verify | An in-depth report detailing the systemic eviction of displaced Ukrainian residents and the redistribution of their private properties to Russian citizens in occupied territories. |
| Human Rights Report | Human Rights Watch, SITU, TruthHounds | "Beneath the Rubble": A comprehensive spatial and on-the-ground investigation mapping the total devastation, loss of life, and destruction of civilian infrastructure in Mariupol. |
| Human Rights Report | Human Rights Watch | A detailed investigation into the sham legal mechanisms used by occupation authorities to declare properties "ownerless," highlighting the administrative and travel barriers designed to prevent displaced residents from asserting their rights. |
| OSINT Investigation | Bellingcat | An open-source intelligence analysis tracking the physical erasure of Mariupol's ruins and the subsequent state-driven construction projects used to russify the urban landscape. |
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Pipelines of Bureaucratic Dispossessionpresents two of the methods currently used by Russia to seize civilian property in the occupied territories of Ukraine on a massive scale.
> The first,an administrative procedure in which civilian properties get designated as “showing signs of ownerlessness.” Owners have 30 days to claim the property, which requires renouncing their Ukrainian citizenship, accepting Russian citizenship, and appearing before a local Russian Court - a physical impossibility for most displaced residents. Failure to comply results in property being transferred to occupation municipal control.
> The second,a court decision that formally recognizes the need to reconstruct the property and transfers ownership to the occupation authority. Contracted developers erect new buildings and the apartments are then given, rented, or sold to Russians with Russian banks offering favorable mortgage rates.
Both pipelines allow for large-scale demographic change. Both provide a veneer of legality to blatant war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, specifically violating the prohibition against an occupying power transferring its own civilian population into a territory that it occupies (4th Geneva Convention).
All data presented here were scraped from official Russian government websites.
This project is one portion of the research from our transnational working group involving the New Practice in Art and Technology at the Technische Universität Berlin, the Center for Urban History in Lviv, the Invisible University for Ukraine, and Bard College Berlin. The project combines open-source human rights investigation with local wartime documentation. The main outcome is a human rights report that exposes forced displacement and unlawful reconstruction in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, which will be published in December 2026.
FUNDING
This project is funded by the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ).
Operating under its German designation, the Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft was originally established to compensate survivors of National Socialist forced labor. Today, the foundation actively finances transnational initiatives that expose contemporary human rights violations, support wartime documentation, and transform historical memory into present-day accountability.