A couple of days ago, The Guardian published an article about Ukrainian orphans who were evacuated to Italy from the Berdyansk and other residential institutions. It contains quite a lot of information that does not fit the official Ukrainian narrative about the need to quickly return orphans from abroad.
It turns out that many teenagers who had lived in Italy for more than two years did not want to return to Ukraine, although Ukrainian officials tried in every possible way to persuade them to return. Some managed to defend their right to choose and remain in Italy through Italian courts.
After returning to Ukraine, one girl was placed in a family-type home where 8 other children were already living. According to her, she did not have a phone for almost a year, but attending church on Sundays was mandatory. She did not attend school. After getting her phone back, she continued communicating with an Italian woman whom she dreams of returning to after turning 18.
The situation is complicated, so let us try to look at it from both sides.
In my opinion, Ukrainian children cannot be excluded from the decision-making process concerning their return. A child, especially a teenager, is not an object that can simply be taken and returned. It should not be done merely for the sake of an abstract “gene pool” of the nation, improving Ukraine’s demographics, or officials’ reports.
If officials constantly talk about the rights and best interests of the child, returning a child from a safe and prosperous European country is not necessarily always in that child’s best interests. I know many cases in which Ukrainian orphans are taken from institutions abroad so that they can live somewhere in a family-type home in Zaporizhzhia or near Kyiv, under shelling, without adequate education or social or psychological support.
I know from my own family’s experience that social and material support for foster families in Ukraine is at a very low level. In many places, it is almost nonexistent. Funding is also low. Many families take in children in order to raise them as “proper Christians” of their denomination. They do not seem to care much about a child’s right to freely choose their religion or philosophy of life. They force children to go to church, and the Bible is the only book in the house.
Many children have developmental disabilities, but inclusion and rehabilitation services are also at a low level. And attending resource centers during constant air-raid alerts is quite a challenge.
Finally, many families do not worry much about safety. In frontline Zaporizhzhia, under constant shelling and with daily casualties, several family-type homes and foster families still live there because they do not want to move elsewhere. Therefore, the concern of EU countries about returning children to such conditions is quite understandable.
On the other hand, there are cases when an evacuated child genuinely wants to return to Ukraine. Keeping a child abroad against their wishes is no less abusive than forcing them to return.
Of course, there are also many risks for children abroad. Adults who communicate with and help a child do not always have good intentions. Adoption abroad requires a system of oversight and the possibility for a child to protect their rights and return in difficult cases. In most cases, consulates cannot provide such a system.
Summary
For me personally, the most important thing is the life and rights of a specific child, rather than the abstract interests of one state or institution or another.
Therefore, I would return evacuated children only if normal conditions for education, development and safety can be ensured in Ukraine. And only with the child’s full consent, without any pressure.
