The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, on Thursday urged the international community to prosecute war crimes in Ukraine at the start of a conference in the Dutch city of The Hague.

Khan has claimed that “legality should not play a secondary role” in dealing with the war conflict. “It should not be a mere spectator,” he insisted.

For his part, Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra stressed the need to develop a common strategy within the framework of the international conference, which seeks to promote accountability for this type of crime with a view to the end of the war.

He pointed out that “it is necessary to act at the first sign of rape, murder and torture” and announced that the government will allocate one million euros to the ICC to strengthen its role.

Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Justice of the European Union, Didier Reynders, considered that judging these crimes is a “titanic task”, which requires a “strong judicial system” on the part of Ukraine.

More than thirty ministers and prosecutors have come to The Hague to attend the conference, which seeks to propose different strategies and ‘roadmaps’ to judge war crimes committed on Ukrainian territory after Russia’s invasion.

Following the first indications of violations of international law in the context of the war, the ICT opened a series of investigations and sent a team of investigators to the country to gather evidence.

At the moment, the Ukrainian judiciary is investigating more than 15,000 possible cases of war crimes.