A senior UN official is concerned about the fate of children displaced by Russia, but also about the existence of filtration camps through which Ukrainians sent to Russia pass, which exist “outside any legal framework”.
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There are “credible accusations” single children forcibly transferred from Ukraine to Russia, said the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Human Rights on Wednesday, September 7, expressing concern about their possible adoption by Russian families. These transfers would take place “to the territory occupied by Russia or to the Russian Federation itself”said Ilze Brands Kehris during a meeting of the UN Security Council on forced displacement in Ukraine.
“We are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children who are not in the custody of their parents, and that these children are eligible for adoption by Russian families”, she added. She also specified that the High Commissioner for Human Rights, of which she is a member, had been able to “to confirm” that the Russian armed forces had set up centers of “triage”, a form of security screening and collection of personal and biometric data. These checks apply to persons leaving a combat zone or crossing into territory under Russian control.
“We are concerned that such checks, and the detentions that follow, take place outside any legal framework and do not respect the principles of necessity and proportionality”she said, referring to “credible information” of “numerous human rights violations”.
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The High Commissioner itself was able “document” cases where the persons subject to this “filtration” were subjected to strip searches, sometimes having to strip naked. “We are particularly concerned about the risk of sexual abuse that women and girls face during these screening procedures”, she added. The United States, at the origin of this meeting of the Security Council with Albania, directly accused the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday of directly organizing the forced displacement of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia.