International Protection of Children’s Rights during Armed Conflicts: The Ukrainian Perspective

[I]t cannot be denied that the needs of children are radically different from those of women, men and the elderly. Today children are still often regarded as miniature adults and are frequently at the mercy of a society or an environment which is not always willing to grant them the status they require: that of future adults. Showing better understanding of children merely means providing them with aid that is more consistent with their needs as developing individuals.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — a sovereign and indivisible state — an act that has since been widely described as constituting aggression and accompanied by allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These acts include deliberate destruction not justified by military necessity; unlawful deportation or forced displacement, including the deportation of persons under the age of 18; the intentional directing of attacks against the civilian population or individual civilians; the intentional directing of attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects that do not constitute military targets; attacking or bombarding, by various means, undefended towns, villages, residential houses, and structures that are not military objectives; killings, including the killing of prisoners of war; torture and inhumane treatment; unlawful deprivation of liberty, including enslavement; enforced disappearances; and sexual violence.

The victims of this war include not only adults, but also children. According to data from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale aggression, 659 children have died and 2,185 have been wounded as a result of hostilities. The Ukrainian police have recorded 2,166 cases of missing children, while 19,546 have been identified as having been unlawfully deported deep into Russia, of whom 1,713 have returned home. Twenty acts of sexual violence against children have also been documented.  

In order to demonstrate the extent to which children’s rights are being upheld during the conflict in Ukraine, this study has been structured into three parts. The first part provides an examination of the key instruments of international humanitarian law, with particular attention to the Fourth Geneva Convention and its Additional Protocols. The second part offers an analysis of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and considers the position of humanitarian law within the broader framework of human rights protection. The final part presents an assessment of the situation in Ukraine through the lens of the aforementioned standards governing the protection of children’s rights in times of armed conflict.

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