Returning Ukraine’s Children
Legal experts consider Russia’s wide-scale illegal displacement and deportation of minors to be a war crime.
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Tuesday, 18 June ‘24
This week’s overview of key events and links to essential reading.
Russia is believed to have deported tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to its own territory, subjecting them to indoctrination, forcing them to take Russian citizenship and often putting them up for adoption. In March 2023 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in connection with these alleged crimes. Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert with the Regional Centre for Human Rights (RCHR), told IWPR’s Olga Golovina about wider efforts to see justice done and ensure that the children are returned to their families.
Olga Golovina: How does child abduction fit into the broader context of Russia's strategy in this war?
Kateryna Rashevska: In the short term, Russia is interested in using Ukrainian children as a bargaining chip, a means of manipulating Ukraine and forcing it to negotiate. Today, the return of children is the only area where there is established cooperation between the opposing parties through the mediator, Qatar. The latter declares that there are prospects for building future peace between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the basis of such cooperation. However, Russia is interested in imposing its own conditions, and Ukrainian children are only a means of pressure.
In the medium term, the goal is to lay a time bomb by indoctrinating children under Russian control and fueling internal conflict in Ukraine by only sporadically returning the children.
Strategically, the goal of the Russian Federation is to re-educate Ukrainian children, turning them into Russian patriots to solve their own demographic and geopolitical challenges.
What specific legal framework defines child abduction as a war crime?
On March 17, 2023, the pre-trial Chamber II of the ICC issued arrest warrants for [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and [Children’s Commissioner] Maria Lvova-Belova in connection with the alleged commission of a war crime in the form of illegal deportation and forced transfer of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia in accordance with Articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute. According to the ICC’s prosecutor’s office, the crimes were committed no later than February 24, 2022.
The UN independent commission of inquiry in Ukraine also came to a similar conclusion. According to the experts, certain situations that they examined constitute a war crime in the form of illegal displacement and deportation of children. The commission also found that in these situations, the Russian authorities violated their obligation under international humanitarian law to facilitate the reunification of families separated as a result of the armed conflict in all possible ways, which can be qualified as a war crime in the form of an unjustified delay in the repatriation of civilian persons.
The presence of the necessary elements in the actions of senior officials of the Russian Federation became the basis for the conclusion regarding the commission of deportation and forced transfer as war crimes. In particular, criminals moved a group of children - persons under protection - to another state or place, being aware of the protected status of such persons and the circumstances of an international armed conflict.
The incidents identified by the ICC prosecutor's office include the deportation of at least hundreds of children removed from orphanages and children's homes. These children were entitled to special protection as provided for in the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Population in Time of War (GC-IV) and Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP-I).
What legal and diplomatic mechanisms are currently in place in Ukraine to facilitate the return of abducted children?
To date, a number of initiatives have been launched in Ukraine which aim to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children who were deported or forcibly relocated to the Russian Federation, as well as separated from their parents due to Russian aggression. Such initiatives include the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, launched at the end of 2023 and which currently unites 36 states, and the platform for the protection of the rights of Ukrainian children within the Council of Europe (created in April 2024, unites parliamentarians from 46 member states of the Council of Europe) as well as the International Council of Experts (Yermak-Kennedy group).
The "ideological" regulators of these initiatives are clause 4 of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi's Peace Formula and the Bring Kids Back UA plan.
The mentioned initiatives play the role of platforms for filling gaps in international and national law, implementing necessary measures in the field of identification of abducted persons, as well as rehabilitation and reintegration of already returned Ukrainian children.
The return itself is mediated by Qatar (Russia also points to Vatican efforts, but Ukraine does not confirm this) ... The details of cooperation are not communicated, as are the circumstances under which the children ended up under the control of the Russian Federation or Ukraine. In the Arabic-language media, the cooperation is positioned as an "exchange" of children, which is an inappropriate qualification from a legal point of view, since Ukraine did not abduct Russian children, and Russia is obliged to return forcibly displaced or deported Ukrainian children immediately and without any conditions.
So such cooperation is politicised and opaque. Its effectiveness is limited, although obviously it is better than nothing. The only way to intensify the return process and make it consistent with the best interests of Ukrainian children and current international standards is the implementation of a single legal return mechanism, within which cooperation will take place on the basis of legally binding agreements.
What role do human rights organisations play in solving this problem?
The RCHR has two major areas of activity regarding the protection and advocacy of the rights of deported and forcibly displaced Ukrainian children.
We developed the concept of a single legal return mechanism and communicated it to representatives of dozens of countries, including the Global South. We also created a draft UN General Assembly Resolution for the return of children. We provided our own vision of the rehabilitation and reintegration processes of returned children, in particular the urgent interim reparations programme. The RCHR supports and provides legal advice to organisations that are directly involved in the return process: Ukrainian Network for Children's Rights and Save Ukraine. By the middle of 2023, most of the children ended up [back] in Ukraine precisely because of their efforts. In addition, the RCHR actively supports state bodies involved in returns.
The RCHR and partner organisations also sent three reports to the ICC regarding the deportation, forcible transfer and unjustified delay in the repatriation of Ukrainian children, as well as the imposition of Russian citizenship on them. One of the reports influenced the issuance of arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova.
The RCHR also submitted shadow reports to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child during the reporting of the Russian Federation, drawing the attention of these bodies to the situation with the rights of deportees, forcibly displaced persons and children in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
We are actively involved in placing individuals involved in deportation on sanctions lists at the national level and in foreign jurisdictions.
How do you work with international organisations and governments to force Russia to return abducted children?
The RCHR initiated an active advocacy campaign for the return of Ukrainian children through the creation and implementation of a single legal return mechanism. We have united both the partner states of Ukraine and representatives of the Global South around this idea. We also created recommendations for a significant number of foreign countries, adapting messages to their geopolitical interests and contributing to the adoption of resolutions condemning the deportation of children at the level of the EU, the Council of Europe and the parliaments of about a dozen countries. We spoke at the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council and in national parliaments to propose effective measures for the return of Ukrainian children and bringing the guilty parties to justice.
What are the biggest challenges you face in your efforts to recover abducted children?
The identification of abducted children and their current whereabouts; the Russian Federation's creation of obstacles to return (imposition of citizenship, forced transfer to Russian families, political indoctrination of children, threats and intimidation) and unwillingness to effectively cooperate with Ukraine.
Opposition to the creation of a legally binding, rather than a political, mechanism and challenges regarding further rehabilitation and reintegration, because it is important to return the child to Ukraine not only physically, but also mentally.
Finally, the ongoing armed conflict with a new wave of offensives also plays a negative role in the process of return and prevention of deportation.
