46th session of the Human Rights Council
Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, including child prostitution, child pornography and other child sexual abuse material
Intervention by Ukraine
(Geneva, March 2, 2021)
Madam President,
We welcome the Special Rapporteur and note her report, highlighting good practices and challenges in counteracting sale and sexual exploitation of children, exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic.
Ukraine attaches great importance to this issue by taking measure at the national level and cooperating with the existing international mechanisms.
Ukraine is taking steps to harmonize national law with the Lanzarote Convention. A relevant draft law was adopted in November 2020 in the first reading.
Our country cosponsored a launch event of Guidelines on the implementation of the relevant OP to the CRC.
In 2019, in connection with the preparation of the SR’s thematic report to the UN GA session Ukraine provided responses to the questionnaire on Safeguards for the protection of the rights of children born from surrogacy arrangements.
Ukraine has long-term co-operation and constructive dialogue with the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA) on the implementation of the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. That said, it should be also underlined that the surrogacy does not appear among the forms of exploitation explicitly mentioned in the Convention. Nevertheless, given the complexity and sensitivity of the issue, Ukraine is determined to continue to improve legislation, policy and implementation measures to address the challenges in this area.
As for the reference in the report presented today to the situation with the newly born children whose parents recurred to a surrogacy pregnancy in Ukraine, we would like to stress that the restrictive measures introduced by our authorities, including closure of borders, were absolutely necessary, reflecting the international practice which proved its effectiveness globally. At the same time, the intended parents of such children were granted entrance permits to be able to collect them from Ukraine under conditions of quarantine. Meanwhile, we faced difficulties in cooperation on that matter with diplomatic missions in Ukraine of a number of countries, where the birth of children using surrogacy is beyond the legal framework.
Ensuring the rights of all subjects of auxiliary reproductive technologies is a sensitive issue requiring a comprehensive approach, involving substantial improvement of the relevant legislation, with due account of the international experience and best practices. This comprehensive legislative process is now under way in Ukraine.
We accepted the SR’s request to visit Ukraine in October last year and supported her proposal to postpone it to the second half of this year. We believe that such a visit will further contribute to clarifying the situation and are looking forward to receiving Madam Singhateh in our country. In particular, a proper assessment of a growing risk of human trafficking in the temporarily occupied territories due to Russia’s aggression should be made.
I thank you.