Photo Credit – Twitter @vrindagrov
The UN Human Rights Council’s 2022 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine’s President, Ambassador Václav Bálek (Czechia), named Vrinda Grover of India to the commission.
Grover, an Indian lawyer, has 34 years of constitutional, criminal, and human rights experience. She has represented clients in significant matters before the Trial Courts, High Courts, Supreme Court of India, commissions of investigation, and quasi-judicial authorities.
Grover represents survivors of sexual violence, custodial killings, torture, communal massacres, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, and mob lynching. She represented journalists, human rights activists, and death row inmates.
Grover has worked for women’s and human rights. She is the chair of the International Service for Human Rights and a founding member and independent expert of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN. The UN Women Asia Pacific Regional Civil Society Advisory Group (2012–2016) included her. She participated in a 2012 OMCT-FIDH fact-finding expedition in the Philippines to investigate human rights advocates.
On March 4, 2022, the UN Human Rights Council established the three-person Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine to investigate all alleged human rights violations and abuses, international humanitarian law violations, and related crimes in the context of Russian aggression against Ukraine. The Council extended the Commission’s mandate by one year on April 4, 2023. Grover will join Commission of Inquiry Chair Erik Mse (Norway) and Commissioner Pablo de Greiff (Colombia), who have served since March 2022.
The Commission will present an oral update to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-fourth session (September 2023), a report to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session (October 2023), and a comprehensive report to the Council at its fifty-fifth session (March 2024).
