Ukrainian children's rights activist: 60% of children left their homes due to war
russia's war forced 60% of Ukrainian children to leave their homes, Ukrainian children's rights and CEO of Save Ukraine charitable foundation Mykola Kuleba says.
"According to my calculations, 60 percent of children have been forced to move from their homes since the beginning of the full-scale aggression, that is more than half of the children have been forced to flee the war,"
His foundation was making every effort to return Ukrainian children illegally deported by russia. Save Ukraine independently conducts such rescue missions.
"We do not cooperate with the russian authorities. Earlier, we began to cooperate with the Ombudsman's Office headed by Dmytro Lubinets, who has relevant negotiations with that party. But we are ready to take on only the issues of logistics, preparation of relevant documents, transportation, delivery, further placement of children, etc.," Kuleba said.
Yevhenia Kapalkina, a lawyer of the NGO "Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group", said that international humanitarian law, in particular the Geneva Conventions, categorically prohibits the occupying power from moving children within the occupied territory or to its own state.
"There are clearly regulated provisions that require the occupying power to comply with them. However, as we can see from the situation in Ukraine, russia does not adhere to these principles and tries to deport children to its territory under the pretext of evacuation.
There it exerts influence both on their consciousness and on their identity and deprives them of the opportunity to communicate with relatives, etc.," the lawyer added.
31 Ukrainian children deported by the russians are returning to Ukraine on April 8 with the help of the Save Ukraine fund.
