Shattering the Darkness

MOKO digital agency: Partners: Hlib Pronenko and Tetiana Mokrenko Creative Director: Olha Livik Strategist: Illia Nikolaiev Art Director: Oleksandra Raskosova Creative Copywriter: Alina Ratnykova Designer: Mariia Servetnyk Animation: Mariia Servetnyk, Andriy Cherkasov Client Service Director: Tetiana Malshakova Project Manager: Marharyta Makhankova, Rina Volosiuk Production: Syndicate Production Sound Producer: Oleksandr Chuprynskyi JurFem Team: Head of Communications at JurFem: Yaryna Voloshyn

The perpetrators seek to hide their crime, while the world turns a blind eye. Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Russian forces have used conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) as a weapon of terror. In February 2024, 274 cases of CRSV were recorded. Ten years into the war, Ukraine still did not have a developed mechanism for supporting survivors. They remained invisible to the state and society, left alone with their trauma, and subjected to blame and bullying by society. To address this issue, an international conference was held on restoring the rights of CRSV survivors and providing interim reparations. The event brought together high-level government officials from all continents. First Lady of Ukraine Ms. Olena Zelenska; Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Ms. Olha Stefanishyna; Government Commissioner for Gender Policy in Ukraine Ms. Kateryna Levchenko; Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Edinburgh, Sophie from the UK; as well as representatives of the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the Delegation of the European Union, and the Council of Europe. But it was the voices of the survivors that should have been the loudest. To achieve this, we created a performance titled ‘Shattering the Darkness’, consisting of two parts. The first is the real voices of the survivors from media reports and videos of the National Police. Every day, they live in the darkness of their trauma, surrounded by the voices of the occupiers (real recordings from intercepted conversations by the Main Intelligence Directorate), and by disturbing sounds etched into their memory. Inaction makes the darkness thicker. For a few minutes, conference guests felt what the survivors experience every day. Any careless action can retraumatize survivors. For this reason, we consulted survivors and psychologists at every stage of developing this part of the performance to ensure it would not retraumatize those who had already suffered. The second part of the performance is made up of key quotes from the conference participants' speeches. It shows that we need to take action now to restore light and faith in justice to the survivors. And everyone present can join in. We filmed and edited this part of the performance in real time, on the day of the conference. We launched the process of adopting the Law on the Status of Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and on Interim Reparations. It will come into force on 18.06.2025. However, a pilot project for the payment of interim reparations is already in place: over 500 survivors have submitted applications, and more than 300 have already received funds. More than 2.5 million people learned about CRSV and the performance through coverage in media outlets and publications. The voices of survivors were heard in 35 countries. The performance is an important lever of influence, so it is still being broadcast at international conferences and meetings. The project started in March 2024 and is ongoing.