UN Human Rights Council denounces deportations of Ukrainian children by Moscow
The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday demanded that Russia allow international organizations to visit children and other civilians “who were forcibly deported” in Ukraine to territories controlled by Moscow.
The resolution adopted on Tuesday calls on Moscow to “stop the unlawful forcible transfer and deportation of civilians and other protected persons inside Ukraine or to the Russian Federation (…)in particular of children, including those who are institutionalized, those who are unaccompanied and those who are separated”. The text was adopted by 28 votes for, 17 abstentions and two against (China and Eritrea).
According to journalist Alec Luhn, correspondent in Russia for The TelegraphRussian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said that “380 Ukrainian children were placed under the “guardianship” of Russian families”.
According to kyiv, 16,221 children were deported to Russia until the end of February, figures that the UN Commission could not verify. Mme Lvova-Belova assured that she had not been contacted by “no representative of Ukrainian power” about the children deported since the beginning of the conflict and invited the parents to write him an e-mail. “Write to me (…) to find your childshe launched.
In February, a group of researchers from Yale University in the United States published an investigation reporting a network of at least 40 camps across Russia used for “patriotic re-education” young victims, where they must be inculcated with a love of Russia and a hatred of the Western world. This study established that at least 6,000 Ukrainian minors had been living for weeks or even months in these camps, cut off from their parents.
A UN commission, organized on March 16, noted that the deportation to Russia concerns children who have lost their parents or who have temporarily lost contact with them during the hostilities, sometimes because of their placement in detention.
Ukrainian authorities frequently claim that Russia’s actions constitute genocide, but the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Norwegian judge Erik Mose, has not come to the conclusion that Russia is pursuing a policy in Ukraine specifically genocidal in the legal sense of the term. However, it asserted that these acts, taken as a whole, constitute a ” war crime “.