The report “Justice Denied in the North Caucasus” represents one of the most comprehensive and well-documented analyses of the human rights situation in the North Caucasus region over the past decades.

Based on the work of the Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center (NEDC), the document collects and examines dozens of emblematic cases of killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, and torture that occurred in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan from the 1990s up to recent years.

The picture that emerges is deeply alarming: not only because of the systematic nature of these violations, but above all due to the near-total absence of justice. Investigations are often incomplete, suspended, or never initiated. In numerous cases, even when the European Court of Human Rights has recognized violations and responsibility, Russian authorities have failed to implement its judgments, reinforcing a climate of structural impunity.

Particularly significant is the fact that many of the victims are journalists, human rights activists, and lawyers—key figures in any free and democratic society. Through both quantitative data and detailed case analysis, the report documents thousands of violations recorded between 2010 and 2018, confirming that the problem does not belong to the past, but continues to define the region’s present.

This document therefore stands as an essential resource for understanding not only the situation in the North Caucasus, but also the structural limits of the rule of law in the Russian Federation.

The reader can find the whole document in our Bibliography section.