Latest News

• September 8: Ukraine managed to return home 9 Ukrainian children who were deported by the Russians to the temporarily occupied territories. In particular, they returned the boy whom the Russians accused of blowing up the bridge, kept in prison for a month and interrogated. Now, he is with his mother in Ukraine.
• September 1: 11 children aged 2 to 16, who were illegally deported by the Russians and kept in the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson region, were returned to the territory controlled by Ukraine. Among them are six children who are deprived of parental care. And five have families.
• August 29: In the temporarily occupied city of Yasinuvata (Donetsk region), children are being deported to Chelyabinsk (Russian Federation). Having destroyed schools and being unable to provide children with means of distance education via the internet, the occupiers are abducting children from their families and sending them to Russia to study. By all means, this is a part of the planned policy on re-educating Ukrainians with propaganda. 
• August 28: The Georgian authorities permitted the entry of a group of Ukrainians who had been forcibly deported to Russian territory prior to their retreat. Among these individuals, five out of the six deportees are former detainees from the Kherson region.
• August 27: With the participation of the Ministry of Reintegration, Ukraine managed to return a 14 y.o. teenager from the temporarily occupied territory.

Advocacy advances

1. Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets criticized the statement of the UN International Commission for Investigation of Violations in Ukraine that it still does not have sufficient evidence of genocide in Ukraine. The Ombudsman reminded that Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines five forms of genocide, the last of which is the forcible transfer of children from one ethnic group to another. According to official information from the Children of War portal, the Russians deported or forcibly relocated 19,546 Ukrainian children.
2. At a meeting of the UN Security Council on 24 August, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Sergii Kyslytsya called on the relevant UN agencies and officials, including UNICEF and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, to address the issue of mass abduction of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine ahead of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals summit that will take place in September.
3. The Regional Center for Human Rights issued a report detailing Belarus’ role in the involuntary expulsion of Ukrainian children. 

Materials we facilitated

• Anastasiia Marushevska, co-founder of Where Are Our People?, published an op-ed answering the most frequent questions the international journalists ask about the forcible deportation of Ukrainians
  https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/2023/08/9/7414873/
• Our researcher Vladyslav Havrylov gave an interview on the history of Russia’s deportation processes regarding Ukrainians
  https://youtu.be/JKkJl0GHCL8
• Vladyslav Havrylov gave comments on the number of the deportees for Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies
  https://ukrainian-studies.ca/2023/08/06/russia-has-abducted-at-least-20000-ukrainian-children/
• Our experts commented for American and British Express.co about the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia and Belarus
  https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1799351/russian-ukraine-genocide-forceful-deportation-children
  https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/107733/russian-ukraine-genocide-forceful-deportation-children
• Anastasiia Marushevska, co-founder of Where Are Our People?, commented about the deportation of Ukrainian children and their mental health for Lithuanian Alfa
  https://www.alfa.lt/mob/aktualijos/pasaulis/pagrobtiems-ukrainieciu-vaikams-rusijoje-plaunamos-smegenys-mazyliai-verciami-rusu-pasaulio-dalimi/297669/

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