The Diplomat
The Socialist Parliamentary Group has submitted a Proposition No de Ley urging the Government to condemn the forced deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia and to support the arrest warrants issued for the same reason by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Government Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.
In its motion, presented in mid-April for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, the PSOE denounces that “episodes of violence, abuse and indignity are taking place in Ukraine that seriously violate the rights of children” and that, in some cases, “constitute war crimes and could even constitute crimes of genocide”.
Among these abuses, the Non-Law Proposition denounces that the Russian authorities “have adopted measures aimed at promoting the transfer of children and favoring their stay in the Russian Federation”, especially after Putin signed “a decree in May 2022 facilitating the naturalization as Russian citizens of Ukrainian children affected by exceptional situations caused by the war, which included measures that hinder their repatriation and reunification with relatives”.
“In an interview in July 2022, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Beloba, the presidential commissioner for Children’s Rights, referred to the possibility that, now that the children had become Russian citizens, temporary guardianships could become permanent,” the Socialist motion recalls.
The Ukrainian authorities put these deportations at more than 19,000 children (figures as of April 8), “although it is impossible to verify this number by independent bodies,” it continues. Likewise, several “social, media and academic entities” (such as Amnesty International, the Associated Press agency or the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine established by the UN) “have documented the forced transfer of children”. The said International Commission has concluded that, in light of the evidence examined, “the actions taken by the Russian Federation violate articles and protocols of the Geneva Convention, amounting to a war crime,” the motion states.
The PSOE recalls that the Convention on the Rights of the Child urges States Parties to ensure that “the child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will” and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide warns that “the forcible transfer of children of the group to another group perpetrated with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group constitutes genocide.” Likewise, on March 17, the International Criminal Court ordered the arrest of Putin and Lvova-Belova for “well-founded suspicions of having committed the crime of illegal deportation and illegal transfer of population from the territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation to the detriment of Ukrainian children”.
Therefore, the Socialist Group asks the Congress to urge the Government to “condemn all actions of the Russian State that violate or jeopardize the welfare and rights of children in Ukraine” and to “consider illegal any initiative of the Russian State that has led to the transfer and naturalization of Ukrainian children in Russia”.
It also urges the Government to support “the efforts of international bodies to further investigate these events, to establish their magnitude and to determine with the utmost precision the nature of the crimes committed and the responsibilities incurred by Russian authorities and officials, with particular attention to crimes that may involve war crimes and crimes of genocide”, and to “support international actions aimed at enforcing the arrest warrants of the International Criminal Court against Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova”.
