Moscow was yesterday to be asked to explain at the UN what has happened to thousands of Ukrainian children believed to have been forcibly sent to Russia since its 2022 invasion.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child — comprising 18 independent experts — is set to examine Russia’s record over two days, as part of a regular review.
Their lengthy list of concerns was sent to Moscow in the first half of last year.
Photo: AP
They want to know how many children have been “evacuated” to Russia or within Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
They also want to know what Moscow has done to protect “the right of such children to preserve their identity, including nationality, name and family relations.”
Kyiv estimates 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly deported to Russia. Moscow says it wants to protect these children from the fighting. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Only about 400 children have so far been repatriated.
“Placements for evacuated children are arranged, first and foremost, at their request and with their consent,” Russia said in a written response sent in October and shown to media by the UN on Friday.
It does not specify the total number of children affected, but said they “included children from national residential institutions for orphans and children without parental care” (about 2,000 in total) and children with Ukrainian citizenship.
It also said that from April 1, 2022, to June 30 last year, an estimated 46,886 Ukrainian children acquired Russian citizenship.
Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert with the Regional Center for Human Rights, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization (NGO), hoped the committee would call for an “international legal mechanism” to identify and return the children home.
“Now, the process of returning Ukrainian children is only a very sporadic process”, she said.
At the current rate, “we need another 90 years in order to repatriate only already-identified Ukrainian children,” Rashevska said, urging the UN General Assembly in New York to adopt a resolution creating an international mechanism.
“The international community is ready to do something, but there is a need to do it faster,” she said.
Other topics would be raised during the UN committee’s review of Russia, with a list of points spanning seven pages.
It wants to quiz the Russian delegation on what Moscow is doing to remove obstacles to children exercising their right to freedom of association and assembly, and to ensure that children are not punished for taking part in demonstrations, particularly against the war in Ukraine.
In a report sent to the UN committee, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was concerned about children’s freedom of expression, their right to freedom of information and discrimination linked to gender identity and sexual orientation.
“Inside Russia, there’s a wide range of children’s rights issues that one could focus on,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia division.
“We only focused on three,” she said, to demonstrate how the “broader crackdown on rights in Russia has an impact on children’s rights as well,” noting how children had faced “retaliation” for voicing critical opinions on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The UN committee also wants to discuss the illegal or arbitrary detention of children, corporal punishment and measures taken to preserve the cultural and linguistic identity of indigenous children.
The experts also want to know what Moscow is doing to combat certain “harmful practices” in the North Caucasus, such as child marriage, female genital mutilation, abductions for forced marriages and polygamy.
“The region faces specific challenges... all exacerbated by weak legal systems and societal norms,” said Grigor Avetisyan, who spent many years in Russia and is now with the Dutch NGO Stichting Russian Justice Initiative.
“The entire region, like the rest of the country, is experiencing... a general decline in human rights conditions,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to