Legal regulation of Сhildren's Rights Protection in The Occupied Territories Of Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the protection of the rights of children who remained in the territory of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops. Today, when during the military aggression of Russia against Ukraine, children's rights are significantly violating, there is a need to study the regulatory and legal regulation of the protection of children's rights. The article analyzes international and national regulatory and legal documents on ensuring the protection of children's rights in wartime. The attention is focused on the rights of children who remained in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, which are most violated by the Russian aggressor, in particular: recruitment and involvement of minors in the ranks of the armed forces of the aggressor and participation in hostilities, abduction of children, separation from parents and forced eviction to the territory of the occupier. It is established that the recruitment of minors in the ranks of the enemy's armed forces and their use in hostilities is absolutely illegal and prohibited by international humanitarian law. According to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the use of children under the age of 15 to fight in armed forces or armed groups is a war crime. It is noted that Ukrainian children are being abducted by the Russian authorities from Ukrainian state institutions and sent to Russia for adoption, which is a gross violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects children from forced displacement. Russian occupiers are separating children from their parents and forcibly taking them to the territory of the occupier. It has been established that, in accordance with the Geneva Convention, forced individual or mass resettlement or deportation of persons from the occupied territory to the territory of the occupying state or any other state is prohibited. The UN Commission recognized the deportation of Ukrainian children as a war crime.