Heartbreaking footage of children fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine alone are emerging as the UN warned that an immediate safe place should be provided for unaccompanied minors.
In one devastating photo, 12-year-old Alexandra sits on a bus holding her sister Esyea, 6, who cries as she waves at her mother Irina, as they leave Odesa in southern Ukraine with members of the Jewish community.
One Ukrainian 11-year-old made international headlines after he traveled nearly 700 miles alone to Slovakia because his mother was too ill to go with him.
Harrowing footage published by CNN shows a small boy sobbing as he walks alone with just a plastic bag in Medyka, a village in Przemyśl, which borders Ukraine. The clip ends with him stopping on an asphalt road surrounded by barbed wire, uncertain of how or where to proceed.
At Przemysl train station, the nearest large Polish town to its busiest border crossing with Ukraine, about 150 Ukrainian children from orphanages in the Kyiv region arrived by train from Lviv on Monday.
Happy Kids, which has helped with the evacuation of about 2,000 orphans so far, has prepared a converted school sports hall to welcome the new arrivals.
“Just two days ago we had a transport of 700 kids,” Przemek Macholak, 25, deputy head of crisis response, said. “It’s not easy to find a place for anybody but it’s even tougher to find a place for 700 kids in the same one place.”
Pictures from Przemysl published on Tuesday show children sleeping in a temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees in a former shopping centre.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Unicef said they expect hundreds of thousands of children to be among the millions desperately trying to escape the conflict, which started on 24 February when Vladimir Putin launched a land, air and sea invasion of Russia’s smaller neighbour.
Among them would be unaccompanied infants whose safety must be prioritized as soon as they cross the border, as the risks of violence, abuse and exploitation are multiplied when crossing borders, according to Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
“The risk of trafficking also soars in emergencies,” the joint statement said, urging neighboring countries to ensure children and families are offered a safe space as soon as they cross the border from Ukraine.
This was echoed by the International Rescue Committee, which said it was “extremely concerned” for the safety and security of women and children – “especially those traveling alone”, who could be at risk of sexual and gender-based violence as well as trafficking .
The 11-year-old boy who arrived in Slovakia with just his passport, a plastic bag and the telephone number of relatives in the capital of Bratislava written on his hand was named on Monday by Slovakia’s Ministry of Interior Affairs as Hassan.
Hassan, who has been hailed a “hero” by authorities, has since been reunited with his relatives, while his mother spoke to say she could not leave her disabled mother alone, as the family lives near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which “Russians are shooting at”.
The statement by UNHCR and Unicef said temporary foster care or other community-based care offers critical protection to those who have been separated at the border, but that adoption should not occur during or immediately after emergencies.
“Every effort should be made to reunify children with their families when possible, if such reunification is in their best interest,” the statement reads.
According to the agencies, there are nearly 100,000 children, half of them with disabilities, in institutional care or boarding school in Ukraine. While appreciating the importance of them being safely evacuated at a time of such crisis, the statement urges acting in the children’s best interests and seeking consent of their parents or guardians.
inews.co.uk
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism