Launching event of the Parliamentary Network
on the situation of the children of Ukraine

Council of Europe, Strasbourg (27 June 2024)

Speech by Theodoros Rousopoulos

President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

____________________________________________________________

Dear Mr Dmytro LUBINETS,

Dear Ms Danielle BELL,

Mr Simon MOUTQUIN,

Dear colleagues,

I am very proud to be here today among you, the parliamentarians committed to the cause of the return of the deported Ukrainian children.

I am particularly thinking of Ms Khomenko, whose report was a starting point for the network we are inaugurating today.

But also of other colleagues, I see familiar faces around me.

A community of engaged individuals who already meet in Paris, Strasbourg, and Geneva around a cause that is dear to their hearts: the situation of the children of Ukraine.

The children who have been deprived of their childhood by a war, a war that should never have taken place.

Even more tragic, the children who have been uprooted and forcibly separated from their homeland.

The ongoing war has resulted in many casualties among civilians, with millions of internally displaced people and refugees.

Hundreds of children have been killed and thousands of children injured.

Almost two-thirds of the children from Ukraine have become internally displaced, and about one and a half million children, most of them with their mothers, have had to take refuge in other states.

I would like everyone to know that the Council of Europe makes this topic its highest priority.

The Council of Europe Consultation Group on the Children of Ukraine works to ensure the practical implementation of policies regarding Ukrainian children residing in the Council of Europe member states.

The Council also works with the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children with a special representative of the Council of Europe acting as a focal point for the Coalition and, more generally, for the situation of children in Ukraine.

And I cannot mention all this work without acknowledging the efforts of the Assembly, the work of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable development, the resolutions it has adopted, and finally, the network which it has now put in place.

And I am very grateful to those parliamentarians who are not indifferent

and who wish to join the network.

The network, whose role is to strengthen the Assembly’s role as a facilitator for the Ukrainian authorities but also various international organisations in identifying, tracing, and repatriating deported Ukrainian children.

There is so much work to be done and the network can have my full support.

Thank you very much for your attention.