Working meeting of UNICEF and human rights agency WEST SUPPORT

Officers Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine Agency "WEST SUPPORT", met the Manuel Fontaine, the Director, Office of Emergency Programmes of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)!

Before 24 February, Ukraine’s orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions for youngsters, housed more than 91,000 children, around half with disabilities. Today, only around one-third of that number have returned home, including those evacuated from the east and south.

The impact of the war on these children has been particularly devastating!!!

During the meeting, cases were discussed with which officers Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine Agency "WEST SUPPORT"!

Throughout Ukraine, Agency "WEST SUPPORT" has 12 deployed mobile units documenting violations of international humanitarian law. “To date, those mobile teams in the east have worked with 600 cases of women and children in terms of responding to specific violence-related queries and reports that the mobile team then follows up on.”

Condemning the fact that hundreds of youngsters have been killed in shelling attacks already, others had suffered serious mental health trauma linked to “direct experience” of violence, both physical and sexual.

During the meeting, it was decided to develop cooperation between the WEST SUPPORT agency and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to ensure effective coordination of ongoing efforts to bring atrocities to justice in the context of Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. And also about joint work in relation to fixing violations of human rights, including those of children in the de-occupied territories, with further transfer of the recorded materials to the prosecutors of the international criminal court for an objective investigation!