46th session of the Human Rights Council
Annual full-day meeting on the rights of the child
Theme: Rights of the child and the Sustainable Development Goals
Intervention by Ukraine
(Geneva, March 1, 2021)
Madam President,
The Sustainable Development 2030 agenda offers critical opportunities to further advance realization of rights of every child without discrimination, aiming to improve children’s lives through a universal set of goals and targets.
Ukraine is taking active efforts to achieve the SDGs, which is reflected in its Voluntary National Review of progress submitted last year.
As a cosponsor of the Human Rights Council resolution “On realizing the rights of the child through a healthy environment” Ukraine has recommitted to take measures to ensure the full enjoyment by children of all their human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Since the very outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine has been making comprehensive steps aimed at ensuring protection of the rights of the child under conditions of quarantine, making it a priority of social protection policy at all levels.
In particular, regional and local state administrations of Ukraine received recommendations on the protection of the rights of the child and social support to families with children; additional social guaranties for certain categories of population for the period of quarantine have been introduced; a series of educational seminars “Protection of children and support to families under condition of the pandemic” have been launched; measures have been taken to facilitate provision of social protection for children in difficult life circumstances, suffering from abuse, in particular domestic violence.
The project “Assessment and response to the challenges in the sphere of protection of the rights of the child during COVID-19 pandemic” was implemented in cooperation with UNICEF and civil society to ensure monitoring of safety and potential of families with children who returned from boarding institutions for the period of pandemic.
While proper measures have been taken on the Ukrainian government-controlled territory, pandemic has further aggravated the situation in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine adding to the sufferings of children living there. Russia as the occupying power continues to withhold the information about the real epidemiological situation in those territories, which leads to increase of the number of infections. In the occupied Crimea about 200 children have been partially deprived of the parental care due to illegal detention of their fathers.
Ongoing aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine significantly impedes achieving the SDGs by our country and ensuring the rights of the child, in particular in the context of provision vital medical, including timely vaccination, as well as educational services, thus leaving Ukrainian children at the occupied territories behind.
We call on the HRC mechanisms to jointly address the latter concerns of the Ukrainian side, as we are talking about most vulnerable stratum of any society – our children.
I thank you.