Parliament began to study crimes against children in Ukraine

The State Duma and the Federation Council created a parliamentary commission “to investigate the criminal actions of the Kyiv regime against children.” The commission included 13 deputies and 13 senators.

The co-chair of the commission, Vice Speaker of the State Duma Anna Kuznetsova, said that more than 24,000 children suffered from the actions of the Ukrainian army. It follows from her words that we are talking not only about the last year and a half, while the Russian special military operation is underway, but also about the actions of Ukraine in the Donbass after 2014. Since then, the European Court of Human Rights (Russia withdrew from the jurisdiction of the ECtHR in 2022 – “Vedomosti”), more than 2,000 lawsuits were sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) – more than 1,500. Who specifically sent the lawsuits and for what reason – she did not specify. “There were no answers. Indirectly, we understand: they know everything. But the lack of answers on their part speaks of the tendentiousness of the positions of international institutions,” the Vice Speaker believes. Kuznetsova claims that “cases of sexual exploitation and rape of minors have already been recorded”, their sale for organs: dozens of children from orphanages disappeared in an “unknown direction”, which was allegedly confirmed by the heads of these institutions themselves.

Vedomosti sent inquiries to Kuznetsova’s representative and to the ECtHR.

The commission will include four working groups. The first will collect materials and facts about criminal acts against minors, analyze and evaluate them. According to her, this group can use the classification of crimes against children during armed conflicts of the UN Security Council. “These are the recruitment of children, the use of child soldiers, murder, mutilation, rape, attacks on schools and hospitals, the sale of children for organs,” she listed.

The second working group will deal with the issues of international legal assessment of the facts of violation of the rights and freedoms of minors. She will have to consider the norms of international law governing the protection of minors, and assess how world organizations and institutions respond to the “criminal actions of the Kyiv regime,” she stressed. The main tasks of the third and fourth groups will be the issues of improving the mechanisms that protect minors from infringements on their rights and freedoms by foreign states, and measures of social support and rehabilitation of minors.

Before that, we recall that a commission worked in the Russian parliament that studied the work of American biological laboratories. It began to operate after the start of the military operation.

On the basis of the document prepared by the commission, Russia can initiate a meeting of the UN Security Council and submit a draft resolution there, Sergey Glandin, an expert in international law, partner at BGP Litigation, explained to Vedomosti. Other countries may veto it, he said. In addition, the document can be put on the agenda of the UN General Assembly and a corresponding resolution condemning Ukraine can be passed.

“You can contact the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he can initiate a check on the fact of the investigation,” Glandin points out. The expert recalled that Russia cannot apply to the ICC, because it has not recognized its jurisdiction since 2016, but it can to the International Court of Justice. It can initiate an investigation under a convention on genocide or the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.

The appeal is primarily directed to the parliaments of non-Western countries – Asia, Africa, Latin America, Alexei Makarkin, first vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies, told Vedomosti. “The main thing is that within the framework of sanctions activities and inter-parliamentary relations, the idea of ​​​​Ukraine’s responsibility in the issue of children can be promoted,” he said.

Political scientist Alexander Nemtsev believes that the creation of the commission is a political response of the Russian side, including to a warrant against the commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. According to him, this is only the first step of the Parliament. It will work if parliamentarians succeed in proving violations, and the report causes a “serious resonance,” the expert concluded.

On 17 March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Children’s Ombudsman. The document stated that she was allegedly involved in the deportation of children from the territory of Ukraine. According to Lvova-Belova, she does not know what cases they are talking about. “We do not currently know what cases are involved. The argument used in the public field is abstract: it does not contain names, surnames, addresses, respectively, we cannot verify it in any way,” said the Ombudsman for Children.