Human Rights House Foundation statement
HRC58 – Item 10 – Interactive Dialogue – Ukraine
28 March 2025
Check against delivery.
Thank you President.
We welcome the High Commissioner’s reporting on the plight of children in Ukraine. This is consistent with the findings of our Ukrainian partners. A recent report by the Centre for Civic Education “Almenda,” focused on the eradication of children’s identities in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Almenda’s report describes how Russia is systematically targeting Ukrainian children with forced russification, indoctrination and militarisation across all occupied territories, repeating patterns observed for more than a decade in Crimea.
The report provides evidence of the near-complete elimination of Ukrainian-language education for hundreds of thousands of children, alongside indoctrination that can potentially, and more easily facilitate, Russia deploying them on the battlefield against their own people.
President.
According to the Crimean Human Rights Group, at least 250 Ukrainian civilians remain imprisoned by the Russian Federation in occupied Crimea for political reasons, many of them Crimean Tatars. Our civil society partners also report a rise in the number of women detained for political reasons.
We continue to call for the release of Emir Usein Kuku, Vladyslav Yesypenko, Iryna Danylovich and Bohdan Ziza among many others.
President.
We ask the High Commissioner whether it can share any specific recommendations on safeguarding language and cultural rights for children in the occupied territories?
Thank you.
