DECRYPTION – While nearly 2 million children have been chased from their homes and sometimes find themselves without parents, associations are trying to shape their future without opening the door to international adoption.
In two months, of the 5 million Ukrainian refugees driven from their homes by the Russian army under the threat of bombing, a third of them are children. If some are accompanied by their parents or more distant members of their family, they would be several thousand orphans, left to fend for themselves.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: questions about the transfer and adoption of children from Donbass to Russia
If it is normal in a humanitarian reflex to want to entrust these children to other families far from the conflicts, it is in reality impossible to adopt a minor in time of war. Indeed, the Hague Convention on the protection of children, signed in 1993 by nearly 100 countries, recalls in article 4 that an international adoption cannot only take place “after having duly considered the possibilities of placement of the child in his State of origin and that it meets the best interests of the child“. Verification impossible to carry out in the event of major population displacements and destruction of local public services.
Read also“The war in Ukraine is a tragedy of children”: how minors find themselves at the heart of the conflict
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