On November 13, 2019, Democracy House is conducting lessons on child protection during armed conflict in schools in Kramatorsk.
The lessons are held as part of the project “Protecting Children’s Rights in Armed Conflict in Eastern Ukraine”, which is implemented by Democracy House with the support of the Embassy of France in Ukraine.
For five years, Ukraine has been recovering from armed conflict. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), it has claimed the lives of about 13,000 people and injured about 30,000. The conflict in eastern Ukraine is also accompanied by gross human rights violations.
In every armed conflict, children are among the most vulnerable groups, whose rights and needs are often ignored. Accordingly, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that at least 147 children died as a result of armed hostilities in eastern Ukraine from April 2014 to November 2018. Moreover, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that some 500,000 children living in conflict-affected areas urgently need protection and humanitarian assistance, including access to clean drinking water, a safe learning environment, quality health care and psychosocial support. This situation is particularly dire for children living within 20 km of the contact line, where shelling and volatile disturbances pose a deadly threat. In addition, the armed conflict has had a devastating impact on local secondary education – some 750 schools have been damaged or closed due to hostilities; boys and girls are forced to study in a militarized environment amidst volatile fighting, mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW).
Ukrainian child protection experts note that the armed conflict has exacerbated pre-existing child rights problems in Donbas. separately consolidated legislation on child protection, human rights activists recorded 85 conflicts of recruitment and use of children in hostilities in non-government-controlled areas and 10 conflicts in government-controlled areas (this violation is a war crime). Moreover, many children are at risk while studying in schools due to their proximity to military facilities, which makes such schools available military targets (protection for the deployment of military and military equipment in densely populated areas). Last but not least, some schoolgirls have been engaged in sex work, dependent on sexual advances from soldiers and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence.
Thus, the rights of children in conflict-affected areas are a sensitive and under-appreciated issue at all levels of Ukrainian society – governmental, public and grassroots.
In this regard, there is a need to raise awareness among children in Donbas about their rights and safety, so that they can more easily identify violations and have the opportunity to use the help of competent authorities or lawyers.
The meta-project is to raise awareness among schoolchildren in Donbas about their legal protection and safety during armed conflict.
During the lesson, high school students in Kramatorsk studied human rights in armed conflict, safe behavior during shelling, and the basics of mine safety.
