The Abduction of Children in Ukraine
Mass air strikes, civil infrastructure bombings, and terror in Ukraine are currently highly disputed and widely discussed topics within the political and global news discourses. However, the terror of war encompasses far more facets than one can imagine, and a large number of topics are currently given relatively little attention. Mass abductions of Ukrainian children are one of those issues that frighten but remain under-discussed.
Young Ukrainians often become targets of Russian attempts to cause irreversible damage to their families and the Ukrainian identity in general. Many underage victims are separated from their families and frequently sent to Russia to be put up for adoption there. After numerous attacks on Ukrainian cities, such as Mariupol, a significant number of kids, now widely called “children of the state”, befell orphans and were found in the basements of the recently destroyed buildings. Despite having state institutions to take over the custody in such cases, a large proportion of orphaned kids were forcefully deported to Russia and given Russian citizenships, according to non-profit news agencies.
According to the officially collected government data, more than fourteen thousand Ukrainian minors have been abducted by the Russian forces. Even with the existence of several online portals that enable parents to look for the kidnaped kids, the chances are usually extremely low. As recently reported by Daria Herasymchuk, Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights and Rehabilitation, only 125 of those who were kidnapped managed to return home.
In late May 2022, Vladimir Putin issued a decree permitting a simplified procedure for Ukrainians to acquire Russian citizenship. Following that, as a result of the illegal annexation of the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson in late September 2022, Putin passed the law recognizing Ukrainian citizens in these territories as citizens of the Russian Federation. Hence, recent Russian legal adjustments annulled any legislative restrictions regarding the special procedure for transferring Ukrainian children to the families of Russian citizens, such as the obligation to obtain consent for adoption from the competent authority of Ukraine. Nevertheless, any abduction of Ukrainian children under current conditions is considered illegal from the perspective of the international community and Ukraine itself.
Legal aspect
From the legal perspective, children’s abduction is considered a violation of criminal law. However, the issue is not directly regulated within international criminal law, and exclusively falls under the authority of the state in which citizens were abducted. The abduction of children infringes the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, particularly Article II, which includes a forceful transfer of children as a part of the definition of genocide. Notably, Russia is still an authorized party to the aforementioned international act.
To secure the legal protection of children internationally and impose accountability for crimes committed against children, the International Criminal Court established the Policy on Children in 2016. In line with the document's main body, forcible transfers of children constitute direct crimes against the underage. Another important type of crime that the policy directly condemns is related to using children under the age of 15 to participate in war-related hostilities, which seems to be another relevant accusation. Non-confirmed data demonstrates that Russian soldiers participated in the kidnapping and subsequently military recruitment of Ukrainian children. However, the lack of official sources and data to confirm the thesis makes it difficult to include it in the allegations.
Hence, stronger cooperation between the states and within international institutions and enhancement of the accountability provisions for breaking the law could potentially bring a reasonable solution to such an acute problem.
International Reactions
Recently, certain European countries and human rights institutions have been attempting to shed more light on the problem of Russia-initiated minors’ abduction in Ukraine. German and Dutch authorities have publicly proclaimed the readiness to work on the establishment of a separate investigative body that would assess the children-related crimes committed by Russians. The US politicians joined the European colleagues in further communicating the call for the authorities to act against the genocidal acts unitedly. Additionally, various sanctions have been imposed on Russian officials to condemn the illegal abduction of Ukrainian children, such as the Canadian federal government’s sanctions targeted at the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova.
The issue of mass children’s abduction from Ukraine remains an open topic and remains a challenge for the international community to withstand. Prompt political reactions, readjustment of the legal systems on different levels, and determination in the will to reverse the situation are the required actions that need to be taken so that the number of children suffering from the consequences of illegal actions gradually comes to zero.