Human rights defenders submitted new evidence of crimes against Ukrainian children to the ICC

Freedom House, the Regional Center for Human Rights and the Human Rights Centre ZMINA submitted a new report to the International Criminal Court on crimes against Ukrainian children.

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This is the fourth submission from human rights defenders, which this time focuses on political indoctrination and militarized re-education of children in the territory of Belarus. These systematic and widespread actions bear the hallmarks of a crime against humanity, including discriminatory persecution, under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute.

“The submission is aimed at further closing the gaps – both in the list of persons who are involved in the processes of displacement and indoctrination of Ukrainian children, as well as in their actions. Attention is paid, in particular, to the representatives of Belarus. Given the complexity of the qualification and the focus on the fact of displacement of children, what happens to Ukrainian children after displacement and to children who remain in the occupied territory is often overlooked. A whole strategy of erasing Ukrainian identity is aimed at them: from calling them exclusively “Russian children” to “resting in camps” surrounded by propaganda and successive militarization. And this practice, unfortunately, works very effectively. Individual children, after a permanent stay in this system, themselves become actors of propaganda. Such a policy of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus and the Union State is aimed at destroying self-awareness as Ukrainians and educating our children as future citizens of the Russian Federation and requires special attention,” comments ZMINA Legal Analyst Onysiia Syniuk.

Advocates of the new report say that it is unique because it is the first time in the history of international courts and tribunals that discriminatory persecution of children is discussed. Criminals deliberately selected children for re-education due to their age, nationality, place of residence and belonging to vulnerable categories such as orphans, children with disabilities and those deprived of parental care. The political indoctrination and militarization of these children caused serious and long-term negative consequences both for each individual child and for the Ukrainian nation.

Also, this message is supplemented with 87 appendices with exclusive information that confirm the complicity of Belarusian agents in eradicating Ukrainian national identity and turning children into enemies of their own nation. Human rights defenders discovered 18 institutions where, since 2021, young Ukrainians over the age of six were regularly taken for re-education, and also identified 2,219 Ukrainian children who suffered from discriminatory persecution, which confirms the wide scale of the crime.

The message describes in detail the hierarchy of guilty persons: from collaborators from the occupied territories to high-ranking officials from Russia, Belarus and the Union State. In addition, the logistics of removal, financing and the mechanism of development of re-education programs are described, which indicates in favour of the systematicity of illegal acts.

Human rights defenders appealed to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court with a request to start an investigation into the political indoctrination and militarization of Ukrainian children, which have signs of a crime against humanity, and also to invite the Pre-Trial Chamber II to issue warrants for the arrest of the suspects.