“For every child, every right“: under this slogan, World Children’s Day is celebrated on November 20, in honor of the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly in 1959 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. On this day, it is necessary to recall the violated rights of Ukrainian children, victims of the aggressive war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.
Most of the war crimes against children are related to the violent actions of the Russian military: children are killed and injured during shelling and other military operations constantly carried out by Russian troops against the civilian population of Ukraine; during the war, homes, children’s institutions, and civilian infrastructure are destroyed, children are often forced to live in terrible conditions – without water, electricity, or heat; many do not receive a full-fledged education – not all schools are safe, and online studies are not possible everywhere due to power outages and interruption of mobile communications.
In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, there are documented cases of sexualized violence against children, their exploitation, and use as hostages; teenagers accused of resisting the occupation authorities ended up in Russian prisons. A proven war crime of the Russian Federation is the removal of children from Ukraine without the consent of their legal representatives to Russia and Belarus, keeping them for a long time in institutions and transfer to foster families, and the deprivation of their Ukrainian identity, language, and ties with Ukraine.
Ukrainian children living in the temporarily occupied territories as well as exported to the regions of Russia are subjected to massive militaristic propaganda, are involved in the activities of paramilitary children’s organizations; the Russian authorities are trying to use them in the war against Ukraine, their native country.
International organizations, governments of countries supporting Ukraine, and charitable initiatives of politicians (and their wives, such as the first ladies of the United States, Turkey, and European leaders, all of whom participate in negotiations with the Russian Federation in some way) should work to adopt an action plan to protect Ukrainian children, including measures such as creating opportunities to leave Russian Federation and return to Ukraine for those children who ended up in the Russian Federation or in the occupied territories; measures to stop the violence of the Russian military, who commit crimes against children in war zones and in the occupied territories; the immediate return, in a war-prisoner exchange, of those children (or young people who were children at the moment of their arrest) who are accused of resisting the occupation authorities and are being imprisoned in Russian pre-trial detention centers and prisons; it is necessary to achieve a complete cessation of the use of children (all children!) for military purposes, whether it is the development of drone models, training in warfare (the game “Zarnitsa”, etc.), work in military factories; it is also necessary to completely eliminate the propaganda of militarism and chauvinism in the education and upbringing of children, and to give them the opportunity to study according to the program of Ukrainian schools.
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