By: Carson Roberts
Journal of Global Rights and Organizations, Associate Articles Editor
Strasbourg, France – Ten children, ages one to five at the time, have not been heard from since Russia took control of Crimea in 2014. On September 22, 2026, a Ukrainian human rights group asked the European Court of Human Rights to recognize that silence as an enforced disappearance.
Women with children in strollers pass armed men believed to be Russian servicemen outside a Ukrainian military base near Simferopol, Crimea, in March 2014. Photo Courtesy of Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters.
The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) filed the application in January 2023 on behalf of the ten children. When Russia asserted jurisdiction over the peninsula in 2014, they were living in state childcare institutions and under the care of the Ukrainian state. According to UHHRU, more than 4,000 children in Crimea without parental care were automatically declared Russian citizens after the occupation began. Ukrainian authorities requested their return. Russia declined and instead opened adoption procedures. Profiles of these ten children later appeared on Russian adoption and foster placement databases, and information about some has since disappeared from public sources. The applicants say this may indicate that the children have been adopted.
The application relies on two provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 5, which guarantees the right to liberty and security, and Article 8, which protects private and family life. Under international law, enforced disappearance combines deprivation of liberty with a refusal to acknowledge a person’s fate or whereabouts. The applicants argue that the children were unlawfully detained and their whereabouts concealed, constituting an enforced disappearance under Article 5, and that the arbitrary change of their citizenship violated their rights under Article 8.
The Court held the public hearing at the applicants’ request. It will rule on admissibility and the merits later.
Represented by the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, the applicants argued that the conduct must be read cumulatively. They submitted that imposing Russian citizenship, combined with the ability to change a child’s name, date of birth, and place of birth, erased the children’s social identity as Ukrainians.
Several third parties intervened. International Partnership for Human Rights and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health jointly submitted that the removal, adoption, and Russification of Ukrainian children are not isolated wartime incidents, but amount to “a deliberate state policy,” planned at the highest levels of the Russian government, codified in federal legislation, and administered by permanent federal institutions. The Government of Ukraine and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute also addressed the Court.
The Russian Government filed no observations and did not appear. The judges pressed the parties on the evidence showing that any of the children had in fact left Crimea or been placed with a family, and on why the application was lodged nine years after the events.
The International Criminal Court has charged similar conduct under a different theory. In March 2023, its judges issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crimes of unlawful deportation and transfer of children, covering conduct dating back to at least February 24, 2022. Neither warrant has been executed, and the ICC has no power to make an arrest itself. By contrast, the case before the European Court of Human Rights requires no arrest and reaches back to 2014.
For further information, please see:
Al Jazeera – ECHR Hears How 10 Children Went Missing After Russia Annexed Crimea – 22 Sept. 2026
ECHR – European Convention on Human Rights – 1950
