Lustration in transitional justice: constitutional principles and international standards

The article examines the feasibility of implementing the institution of lustration as one of the possible instruments for the reintegration of Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories. Based on the analysis of domestic constitutional courts’ decisions and European Court of Human Rights practice, the article assesses the key principles of legal responsibility that should guide any lustration process. The necessity of applying such principles during post-war lustration in Ukraine is substantiated through the core components of the rule of law. These include legality, legal certainty, individual responsibility and due process for those subjects to lustration. The need to develop new approaches to lustration in Ukraine is emphasized, as well as the need to design a balanced law as the basis for regulating lustration processes in the deoccupied territories in compliance with international human rights standards. Special attention is devoted to the potential legal challenges that may emerge during the implementation of lustration in the reintegration processes, considering the approaches of European domestic constitutional courts, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization. The article highlights the need to develop a strategy or national plan for implementing lustration mechanisms to comprehensively integrate them into the constitutional architecture of the state. The model should be focused on safeguarding human rights, in which lustration is not a mechanism of punishment, but an instrument to restore trust and rebuild Ukrainian society. Individuals who were forced to collaborate with the occupying regime, but were not involved in serious human rights violations, should be able to participate in truth-seeking and reconciliation mechanisms, social dialogue and recognition of their responsibility in a manner that contributes to the reconstruction of society, ensures accountability, non-repetition and individual responsibility, maintaining the balance between the administration of justice and the protection of human rights and freedoms.

lustration; rule of law; individual accountability; due process; transitional justice