On 7 June 2025, PJI’s Co-Executive Director Max Marcus participated in a talk following a powerful stage performance related to the war in Ukraine.
The discussion focused on the critical process of documentation and its impact on victims and survivors. Max emphasized a key principle in PJI’s work: Survivors must be at the centre of every justice effort.
PJI tests all of our work against this core principle, including our work with investigators and lawyers in Ukraine. For example, our colleagues at the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR) put this principle into practice. They recently published the results of their investigation into systemic sexual violence in Kherson—work that PJI supported and which puts survivor testimony first.
The stage production that inspired this discussion is called The Reckoning, and it debuted in London at DASH Arts on 29 May 2025. This documentary-style play brought to the stage verified statements collected from Ukrainian victims and witnesses to unlawful killings, torture, sexual violence, and forced displacement committed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in early 2022.
The Reckoning centres survivor experiences by presenting witness testimony without embellishment or alteration. The play honours the dignity of survivors and emphasizes the essential role their voices play in exposing the truth. Josephine Burton, one of the playwrights, stated:
“It’s inspired by interviews taken with Ukrainians, who are survivors of the Russian war in Ukraine and collected by Ukrainian journalists. It’s a play that Anastasia Kosodii and I have written drawing on these extraordinary verbatim interviews and turning it into a piece of compelling drama.”
The Reckoning shows that public storytelling can powerfully complement legal advocacy by amplifying the voices of survivors far beyond a courtroom, and it invites audiences to join the call for accountability and to witness, in a profound human way, the horrors to which justice must respond.
PJI stands in deep admiration of ongoing efforts to centre survivor stories, not only through legal advocacy but also through other forms of public storytelling. All these efforts help to build a foundation for meaningful, survivor-centred justice and accountability for atrocity crimes.