A cross-party group of more than 130 Westminster MPs has written to ministers urging them to ensure any US-brokered peace plan for Ukraine includes protections for forcibly-deported Ukrainian children, saying the current version risked “extinguishing” their rights.
Led by the Labour MP Johanna Baxter, the letter to Stephen Doughty, whose Foreign Office brief includes Europe, warns that the current peace framework being touted by the Trump administration would “hollow out” protections to children enshrined in the Geneva convention.
Tens of thousands of children in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia have been removed from their homes, with many taken to camps where they are indoctrinated and militarised, an effort widely seen as a war crime.
In the letter to Doughty, the 132 MPs, who come from Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and two Northern Irish parties, note that Russia is a signatory to the Geneva convention, which gives special protection to children during war.
“Yet deeply disturbing reports in recent days indicate that the 28-point ‘peace framework’ for Ukraine, reportedly negotiated by the United States, makes no reference to the specific treatment of children, nor does it recognise their protected status under international humanitarian law,” the letter continues, saying that the only mention of children is in connection with a wider point about returning prisoners of war or hostages.
“The omission of the special protection afforded to children is not a technical oversight: it clearly forms the basis of Russia’s deliberate attempt to dismantle the Ukrainian state by erasing Ukrainian identity one child at a time,” the letter says.
It also castigates an element of the peace plan that says all parties would receive a full amnesty for their actions in the war, which would nullify international arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for childrens’ rights, who has been implicated in the forced deportation programme.
The MPs add that if a peace plan involved recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk it would bring “devastating” implications for 1.6 million Ukrainian children living there.
“Alongside their forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, it is now well documented that Russia has also pursued a systematic policy of indoctrination, coercion, and militarisation of Ukrainian children,” they say.
“Any settlement that legitimises occupation risks permanently extinguishing the legal protections afforded to the Ukrainian children living in these occupied territories, their national identity, and their right to return home. This would not merely undermine international law but would hollow out the fourth Geneva convention at its core.”
Baxter, who has campaigned on the issue of Ukraine’s children, said: “Russia has pursued a sustained and systematic policy of indoctrination, militarisation and forcible deportation of Ukrainian children, in what can only be described as an attempt to erase Ukraine’s future one child at a time. These are war crimes for which there should be no amnesty.
“It is vital that the UK government works with international partners to ensure that any final peace deal upholds international humanitarian law and the special protections it affords to children and that Russia is held accountable for the war crimes that they continue to commit.”
The Foreign Office was contacted for comment.
