2024-01-23T17:18:00+02:00 Politics 2024-09-15T04:47:17+03:00

Ukrainian news

UN to demand explanations from russia regarding fate of deported Ukrainian children

UN to demand explanations from russia regarding fate of deported Ukrainian children

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child intends to find out the number of Ukrainian children deported to russia or the territories occupied by it, as well as whether their rights to preserve their identity are respected.

Voice of America has informed about this, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child - a group of 18 independent experts - will discuss the state of affairs in this matter within two days as part of a regular review.

"The committee intends to find out how many children were deported to Russia or Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, as well as what Moscow has done to protect the right of such children to preserve their identity, including citizenship, name and family relations," the publication reports.

It is noted that the UN Committee sent a list of questions to moscow in the first half of 2023.

So far, only about 400 children have been repatriated.

The written response of the russian side, which was demonstrated to the press on January 19, reports that the placement is carried out "at the request of the children and with their consent."

The response does not indicate the total number of such children, but it is noted that we are talking about "children from national residential institutions for orphans and children left without parental care (about 2,000 people in total)," as well as children with Ukrainian citizenship.

It was also reported that in the second quarter of 2023, about 46,886 Ukrainian children will receive russian citizenship.

The UN calls on moscow to answer the question of what it is doing to remove obstacles preventing children from exercising their right to freedom of association and assembly, and to ensure that children are not punished for participating in demonstrations, especially against the war in Ukraine.

In a report sent to the UN Committee, NGO Human Rights Watch said it was concerned about issues of ensuring children's freedom of expression, their right to freedom of information, and discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation.

The UN Committee intends to discuss illegal or arbitrary detention of children, corporal punishment applied to them, as well as measures taken to preserve the cultural and linguistic identity of indigenous children.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in December, the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories said that about 4,000 Ukrainian foster children were in the temporarily occupied territories and in russia.

In July, Grigory Karasin, chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the Federation Council (upper house of the Federal Assembly of the russian federation), said that 700,000 Ukrainian children had been taken to russia in recent years.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of russian dictator vladimir putin on charges of war crimes. He, as well as the Commissioner for the Rights of the Child, Maria Lvova-Belova, is accused of illegally deporting Ukrainian children.