So far, 37 countries have joined the international coalition to return illegally deported children to Ukraine.
This was stated by Dmytro Lubinets, the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, during the opening of the exhibition and presentation of the book Living the War: Children, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said at the opening of the exhibition and presentation of the book.
According to the ombudsman, one of the tools for the return of Ukrainian children is an international coalition created at the initiative of Canada. According to Lubinets, ‘there is currently no international system of child protection in the world.‘The main issue is that the international coalition has committed itself to using all the levers that these countries have to return Ukrainian children. Public and non-public. We see that it works. We have a public mediator, Qatar. But the international coalition and every country that has publicly joined this area shows results in general,’ the ombudsman said.
Lubinets stressed that the deportation of Ukrainian children should be recognised as a war crime and genocide. The Ombudsman pins his hopes on the Peace Summit in Switzerland.
‘We expect that the Peace Summit will bring additional levers of influence on the Russian side, to change their position and speed up the process of returning Ukrainian children, as well as other categories of Ukrainian citizens illegally detained by the Russian Federation on its territory or in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,’ the Ombudsman added.