UN experts warn Ukrainian disabled children at high risk of human trafficking

Thousands of children with disabilities are facing neglect, abuse, physical restrictions, human trafficking, and vulnerability to being displaced in streets, UN Special Rapporteurs said in a statement on Thursday.

The Russian war against Ukraine has pushed thousands of children to go back to their families or communities of origin, but without providing “an appropriate” assessment for the best services or cases they need to overcome their mental or physical disabilities. The UN experts have voiced their concern about ending the fate of other children with disabilities to be left in the streets or to be victims to human trafficking.

In addition to this, it has been reported that other children with disabilities were placed from their institutions to other care houses inside the country, but they lack means of health care. Other problems they face include “neglect, abuse, physical restrictions, denial of appropriate stimulation, and access to basic services including education and healthcare in institutional settings.” 

The experts said that another added problem due to this ongoing war is that the lack of communication between some disabled children who are being kept in unknown institutions with their families, adding that “cross institutionalization cannot be a strategy for the future.”

The UN experts said that Ukraine had asked other countries to host Ukrainian children with disabilities inside institutions, “even when those countries have successfully moved away from institutionalization as a policy response for their own citizens.”

They also voiced their hope to focus on rebuilding appropriate institutions and a good environment and future for the children with disabilities.

Before the outbreak of the Russian war against Ukraine on February 24, the number of children with disabilities in care houses or boarding schools reached about 45,000 children, according to UNICEF.

Since the beginning of the Russian war until June 10, about two-thirds of Ukrainian children were internally displaced, UNICEF said, noting that 1 in 5 persons of the internally displaced have a developmental delay or disability. 

UNICEF added that at the beginning of the war, there was not a plan for evacuating children with disabilities, and as a result they “have faced a lack of access to shelters, essential services, medicine, and food.”

 

In early May, BBC made an investigative report on the situation of Ukrainian disabled children in orphanages, revealing how they were left behind in institutions where they suffer from lack of care and services. The report revealed that children with severe disabilities were exposed to abuse, as some of them were tied in bed and left screaming in one of the visited orphanages.