The first event within the project "Advocacy Coalition — Defending Our Future Now," dedicated to the problem of Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children in temporarily occupied territories, took place in Luxembourg. This was reported by Dmytro Lubinets, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, writes UNN.
I appealed to the international community with an important message: Russia has been systematically abducting and forcibly displacing Ukrainian children since 2014.
According to Lubinets, about 1.6 million children lived in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine before the war. In the period from February to December 2022 alone, over 700,000 children were forcibly taken to Russia, and this figure does not reflect the full scale of the tragedy.
The world has finally recognized that the deportation of Ukrainian children is a crime against humanity, and obstructing their return is a war crime.
However, according to Lubinets, the matter is much deeper: Russian policy is aimed not only at the physical removal of children but also at depriving them of their identity, language, family, and cultural memory, which bears signs of genocidal intent.
During the event, the ombudsman accompanied a Ukrainian child who had already returned home. The girl spoke about the persecution of her parents in the temporarily occupied territories, forced schooling in a Russian school, and the need to obtain a Russian passport and sing the Russian national anthem to be able to leave.
As of today, 2,060 children have returned home, 424 of them thanks to the work of the Ombudsman's Office. However, thousands of children still remain in Russia.
He emphasized the need for decisive action: to ensure the return of every child, provide them with safety and support, and the right to restore a normal childhood.
This is our shared responsibility to the current and future generations of Ukraine.