As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR ) publishes its harrowing documentary ‘The Impact of Armed Conflict and Occupation on Children’s Rights in Ukraine (24 February 2022 – 31 December 2024)’, the Trump administration under Elon Musk cancels a major Yale University programme to prosecute Putin’s war crimes against 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children.

International Society for Human Rights: 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children must not become a ‘bargaining chip’ between Trump and Putin!

 

The latest UN report on the impact of the war on Ukrainian children is shocking:

 Dead and wounded children and infants

At least 669 children were killed and at least 1833 children were seriously wounded. In Mariupol alone, 120 children were killed and 127 wounded between February and April 2022. Last year, the number of children killed and wounded rose sharply compared to the previous year, more than doubling. Most of the children killed and wounded were between 16 and 17 years old, but at least 57 babies were also among the victims.

Most serious war crimes against children

Millions of children are directly affected by significant human rights violations as a result of the war. In the four illegally annexed oblasts of Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk, such human rights violations against children include mass executions, gang rape, torture and ill-treatment. The UN report reads: ‘In the Kherson region in March 2022, a Russian soldier entered a house where a 16-year-old, seven months pregnant, was hiding with her relatives from the shelling. The soldier raped the girl after threatening her with gang rape and execution.’

Uprooting, separated families, traumatisation

At least 737,000 children are among the 3.6 million internally displaced persons and over 1.7 million children among the approximately 7 million refugees from abroad. Most children have been separated from their fathers since the beginning of the war, and at least 75,000 children have been separated from both parents. Over 2.5 million houses and flats were destroyed.

Education and health

1614 bomb attacks on educational facilities and 744 on healthcare facilities were recorded. The paediatric clinic in Kherson was bombed 8 times between 2023 and 2024.

Continuous bombardment

Nationwide, more than 1000 hours of siren alarms were registered (41 full days of 24 hours each), in areas on the front line (Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhia) 5000 hours (208 full days and nights).

Forced russification and militarisation of children in the annexed territories

No Ukrainian child in the annexed territories can escape the rigid patriotic Russification. All Ukrainian educational institutions and the use of the Ukrainian language have been banned since the beginning of 2023. Numerous laws, decrees and presidential decrees have prioritised the education of Russian patriotism. Starting with the introduction of cadet classes from the age of six. With the ceremonial raising of the Russian flag and the joint singing of the Russian anthem even for pre-school children. With school curricula and history books that deny Ukraine its identity and demand hero worship of Russian soldiers. For example, Ukrainian children have to thank Russian soldiers for their service and heroism as part of the regular school activity ‘Letters to Soldiers’. Teaching staff receive training in which they are taught to identify Ukrainian symbols and the expression of pro-Ukrainian sympathies in children. At the end of 2024, a presidential decree ordered that ‘educational activities should also be aimed at instilling deep Russian patriotism and traditional all-Russian spiritual and moral values in children during periods of rest and convalescence, including summer camps’.

Forced deportation and Russification of 20,000 Ukrainian children to Russia and Belarus

It remains unclear why the UN report on the impact of the Russian war of aggression on children’s rights only mentions a fundamental war crime in passing. It is the war crime for which Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally indicted by the International Criminal Court on 17 March 2023 on reasonable suspicion as an alleged war criminal and for which an arrest warrant has been outstanding ever since. Around 20,000 children were abducted from the occupied and annexed Ukrainian territories to Crimea, Russia and Belarus, particularly at the beginning of the war. Russia does not provide any information about the whereabouts of these children. New Russian passports and rigid Russification of these children make it difficult to trace them.

Yale University programme to record and search for the 20,000 abducted children discontinued and data possibly deleted

A special programme of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) in the USA has been working with the ‘Restore Ukraine’s Children’ programme introduced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi to repatriate the abducted children. The Yale University research team has collected data on 19,546 children and has so far identified 8,400 children who have been relocated to at least 57 centres, including 13 centres in Belarus. The Yale programme collected satellite images, biometric data and other evidence of forced relocation. This digital trail enabled hundreds of children to be repatriated, and the data also served as reliable evidence in potential war crimes trials.

This programme has now been discontinued. According to media reports, the scientists from the Yale research team were informed of this on 14 March, the day of Donald Trump’s almost two-hour telephone conversation with Valdimir Putin. According to insiders, not only was the programme shut down, but all the data was irretrievably deleted: ‘If you wanted to protect President Putin from prosecution, you would have to destroy this thing. And that’s exactly what they did’. The ‘final version with all metadata that would be admissible in court’ was destroyed, according to a report by zeit-online on 9 March.

US senators demand answers from government

A bipartisan group of 17 US senators, led by Ohio Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman, has now sent an official letter to the US Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State demanding answers from the government and calling for the extension of personal sanctions (including for Belarus) and the immediate resumption of the programme. In the letter, the senators criticise the ‘worrying decline in American leadership in the fight against these war crimes’ and express ‘reason to believe that the data has been permanently deleted from the archive’. If the evidence is not restored, at least 30,000 innocent Ukrainian children will be left in the lurch, they added.

It concludes: ‘Our government performed an important service here – one that does not require transfers of arms or cash to Ukraine – in pursuit of the noble goal of saving these children. We must immediately resume the work of helping Ukraine return these children. With the start of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the return of these children must be our priority, as the law and our values demand.

ISHR – 20,000 abducted Ukrainian children must not become a ‘bargaining chip’ between Trump and Putin!

Although US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce immediately rejected the assumption that this data had been deleted in a press conference, there was no prospect of the programme being continued quickly. However, President Trump ‘promised to work closely with both parties to ensure that these children return home,’ the White House said. ‘The president of the most powerful country in the world saying, ‘I’m going to do something here…. I think that’s a pretty good, clear indication that we can still work on important issues and implement them without it being in a certain structure that already existed,’ Tammy Bruce continued in the press conference.

The International Society for Human Rights once again vehemently criticises the form of US President Donald Trump’s peace talks. The war crimes of Russian President Vladimir Putin must not be swept under the carpet in order to achieve a supposed concession from Russia in the peace negotiations. These most serious crimes against humanity committed against at least 20,000 Ukrainian children must not become the subject of negotiations between ‘dealmakers’ and ‘war criminals’. There is only one place for such human rights crimes and that is the International Criminal Court in The Hague.