The Council of Europe urged to urgently create a mechanism to return children who were taken to Russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine

Dunya Miyatovich, commissar of the European Council for Human Rights, announced the need for urgent actions to reunite Ukrainian children taken to Russia from the occupied territories of Ukraine, with their families.

“Ukrainian children are one of the most vulnerable and helpless victims of the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine. It is necessary to act immediately, ”Miyatovich emphasized, summarizing the results of her trip to Ukraine.

According to the human rights activist, it is very difficult to establish reliable figures - how many children were taken to Russia - especially in the case when these are children who were unaccompanied by adults, or those who were in orphanages or other guardianship institutions. There are several projects involved in the search for children, for example, the site of “ Children of the War ”, but it is still impossible to establish all the missing people.

“This is a matter of the highest priority, and it must be solved by joint efforts - all interested international organizations, using all available expert knowledge. All parties need to provide unlimited access to records and information about all Ukrainian children taken to Russia and the territory occupied by Russia, to ensure their identification and search for relatives in full accordance with the rules for protecting personal data, ”said Dunya Miyatovich.

She also calls on the international community to support and cooperate with reliable organizations and networks of Ukrainian and Russian human rights defenders.

In January, the Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Child Rights Daria Gerasimchuk said that during the war about 14 thousand Ukrainian children were taken to Russia, only 125 of them managed to return to their homeland. In total, 464 children were killed during Russian aggression. A recent new package of EU sanctions introduced restrictions against persons involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children and exporting them to Russia.

Earlier, the Conflict Observatory project came to the conclusion that in Russia there are a network of institutions in which they “re -educate” Ukrainian children stolen during the war. Most were created on the basis of recreation camps. In total, at least six thousand children went through such camps.