The EU said on Friday it will do “everything in its power” to return to their families those Ukrainian children allegedly deported by Russian invaders.
Sweden’s Queen Silvia told a summit on the fate of children in the war that young people had been “uprooted from their homes, separated from their parents, exposed to violence and death”.
Ukraine and UN agencies say thousands of children have been relocated to Russia and put up for adoption in what Kyiv calls an effort to suppress their Ukrainian identity. Moscow says it is merely taking them to safety.
The International Criminal Court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin linked to the allegation of unlawful deportation of children.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the summit in Stockholm that the world should “not underestimate the bad long-term consequences from these brutal family separations”.
“Generations from now will grieve, remember and condemn,” he said.
Dubravka Suica, the EU commissioner responsible for children’s rights, said the alleged abductions were “a terrible crime inflicting unimaginable suffering”.
“We will do everything in our power to help return the children to their families and their communities.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that 371 children had been brought back to Ukraine after efforts by governments and humanitarian groups to negotiate their return.
However, they are only a small fraction of the more than 19,000 children that Ukraine claims have been unlawfully deported or separated from their parents.
“I am waiting for the moment when every child will be home again,” said Ukraine’s Social Policy Minister Oksana Zholnovych.
Many other children have been displaced within Ukraine or were forced to flee the country with distant relatives, carers or family friends.
At least 1,276 children have been killed or injured in the fighting, according to Unicef, with millions in need of humanitarian aid.
Those living as refugees in the EU sometimes have an uncertain status because of disjointed laws that make it unclear who their legal guardian is, the summit was told.
Michael O’Flaherty, the director of the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights, said it was uncertain how well the children's integration into European schools had worked.
If schooling becomes too difficult, Ukrainian children might drop out and fall into social exclusion or juvenile crime, he said.
Ukraine was also urged to reform a pre-war social care system that the EU said relied too much on placing children in institutions.
Ms Suica said reforms to “achieve the effective abolition of outdated institutionalised care structures” were a condition of Ukraine’s potential future EU membership.
The Swedish queen, the founder of a charity called the World Childhood Foundation, said the safety of children “cannot wait”.
Protecting children is “just as important and urgent as food and shelter”, she said, “yet too often it is forgotten, not prioritised or underfunded”.
