Justice for Peace in Donbas Coalition is gathering information on the involvement of children in hostilities
The Coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbass” has already begun to work on a new ambitious project, a report on the involvement of children in armed groups during the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The work on the publication is coordinated by the NGO “Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives”. EUCCI is currently collecting the data – not only from open sources, but also by interviewing people who witnessed such involvement. Above all are former prisoners and IDPs.
Currently there are two people working on the report: Sergei Burov, the chairman of the House of Education on Human Rights in Chernihiv, representative of NGO “March”, and Alexey Lazarenko, the former Head of Criminal Police Children’s Affairs Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The report will be published in three months.
At first, experts will analyze the data collected in a Coalition’s secured database, as well as information from open sources. In the future, human rights defenders will talk about the reasons that compel underaged and juvenile to engage in armed groups, as well as ways of attracting boys and girls to war.
“Unfortunately, this problem has become relevant in Ukraine today. Previously, we thought that this couldn’t happen. And when it came to participation of children in armed groups, we thought it was not just about Ukraine. This monitoring will be operated on time. In the first place we should prevent the involvement of children in armed groups. The facts that are revealed, where armed groups deliberately attract children to participate in hostilities, under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and should also be properly investigated”, – said Sergey Burov, the co-author of the upcoming report.
This problem is taking place not only on the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, controlled by Ukrainian government. Now the authors of the report know facts of the involvement of children in armed groups and voluntary military forces in the liberated territories, which at that time were not in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the authors of the edition stress that it is important to monitor this issue, so that it won’t repeat.
The Coalition is inviting stakeholders to cooperate and asks to report the known facts of involving the underaged in hostilities via email jfpcoalition@gmail.com. We collect information not only on children exploitation in illegal armed formations with a weapon on their hands, but also other forms of involving the underaged. Any exploitation of children under 15 in armed groups is a crime.
We would like to remind you, that the first joint work of NGOs and initiatives within the Coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbas” was the report and a documentary “Surviving Hell”. These edition and movie were presented in Kyiv and in several cities in Eastern Ukraine, as well as within international diplomatic circles.
Activities in gathering information and preparing a report on the involvement of children in military actions are carried under the project “Strengthening Institutional Development of Coalition through the development of an electronic database of violations and strengthening internal and external communications”, supported by UNDP, and within the “Expert support documentation of crimes against humanity and war crimes during the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine”, supported by the The International Renaissance Foundation.
Source: https://jfp.org.ua
