Violation of children’s rights: The Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights received over 3,420 appeals

The topic of protecting children’s rights in wartime encompasses several areas of work at once – from considering appeals and inspections in institutions to returning children from occupied territories, Russia and other countries where they ended up due to war, loss of contact with their families or forced displacement. The 2025 report, which was published on April 2 by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets, contains figures that give an idea of ​​the scale of this work: thousands of appeals, hundreds of monitoring, some complex operations to return children and constant support for those who have already been taken to safe conditions.

As reported by Dmytro Lubinets, during 2025, the Ombudsman’s Office received 3,426 appeals regarding violations of children’s rights, and the secretariat’s employees carried out 826 visits and 110 on-site monitoring. These data cover both responding to specific complaints, and checking the conditions in which children are, and supporting individual cases that required urgent intervention.

The statistics provided by the Commissioner show the burden on the child rights protection system throughout 2025. 3,426 appeals concerned violations with which citizens, families, legal representatives of children or other applicants addressed the Ombudsman’s Office, who reported problems that required verification and response.

Along with considering these appeals, the Ombudsman’s Office carried out 826 visits and 110 on-site monitoring. This form of work includes checking the conditions of children’s stay, collecting information about violations, monitoring compliance with their rights, and further preparing decisions or recommendations if the situation requires the intervention of state bodies or special services.

A separate block in Lubinets’s report concerns the return of children who ended up in temporarily occupied territories, in Russia or outside Ukraine under circumstances that required a separate operation. Within the framework of the presidential initiative Bring Kids Back UA, 667 children were returned in 2025.

The total number of children returned within the framework of this initiative, according to the data provided, as of December 31, 2025 was 1,943 children, and as of January 2, 2026 – 2,063. The Commissioner’s Secretariat, according to Lubinets, returned 410 children, of whom 194 were returned during 2025. These figures are given on different dates, therefore they reflect the movement of the process over time and constant updating of data.

Among the examples of spot operations, the Ombudsman spoke about the return of a three-year-old boy from Cairo who ended up abroad without his mother. He cited this case as an example of work where the result depends on a long route, the personal participation of the secretariat staff and the willingness to accompany the child at all stages of the return.

According to Lubinets, the secretariat staff did not limit themselves to organizational actions at a distance, but went after the child in person. The Ombudsman noted: “The staff of our secretariat not only did everything to return the boy, but also went after him – 3,600 kilometers. That’s 50 hours of travel.”