Committee on the Rights of the Child

List of issues in relation to the combined sixth and seventh periodic reports of the Russian Federation *

The State party is requested to submit in writing additional, updated information (10,700 words maximum), if possible before 2 June 2023. The Committee may take up all aspects of children’s rights set out in the Convention during the dialogue with the State party.

Part I

Please explain the measures taken or envisaged:

To implement the Decade of Childhood (2018–2027), including its plans of action, and to assess its implementation to date and develop further plans of action;

To ensure coordination and cooperation among government institutions to implement the Convention and its Optional Protocols at the federal, regional and local levels and to provide the institutions with adequate and specific human, technical and financial resources. Please also inform the Committee as to whether the activities of the Coordinating Council for the Decade of Childhood cover all areas of the Convention and its Optional Protocols;

To earmark sufficient specifically targeted budget resources for the implementation of the rights of children, in particular those in marginalized and disadvantaged situations;

To establish a comprehensive data-collection system that disaggregates data, by age, sex, disability, nationality, ethnic origin and migration status, as well as by other categories, and which could be used for policy decisions;

To strengthen human rights monitoring institutions, such as the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, by ensuring that they are in line with the principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles) and that they carry out comprehensive and systematic monitoring of children’s rights;

To put an end to the practice of declaring non-governmental organizations, including those working on the rights of children, to be “foreign agents” or undesirable organizations,and provide them with a legal framework that would allow them to operate independently;

To establish legal accountability for business enterprises and their subsidiaries, in particular in the oil, gas and coal-extraction industries, that operate in or are managed from the State party to ensure that their operations are in line with the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto.

Please explain the measures taken:

To adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination law that covers all elements enshrined in article 2 of the Convention;

To prevent discrimination against children in marginalized and disadvantaged situations, in particular migrant and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children;

To ensure that the right of the child to have their best interests taken as a primary consideration is integrated into, and consistently interpreted and applied in, all legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings and decisions;

To support the autonomy of children in exercising their rights in line with their evolving capacities;

To guarantee access to justice for child victims of violation of their rights while in institutional care.

Please describe the measures taken:

To ensure that all children born in the territory of the State party are registered at birth and issued with a standard birth certificate;

To ensure children’s full enjoyment of freedom of expression and that no child is persecuted or prosecuted for expressing views, including views that dissent from those of the State;

To provide children with access to information, including by lifting the bans and arbitrary restrictions in place in the State party on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Twitter, and by conducting campaigns on children’s digital rights. Please also inform the Committee of the measures taken to put an end to State propaganda in schools;

To remove barriers for children’s enjoyment of their right to freedom of association and assembly, and ensure that children are not punished for participating in any protests, including in anti-war protests.

Please explain the measures taken:

To explicitly prohibit in law and eliminate in practice corporal punishment in all settings, including in the home, alternative care settings and day-care centres;

To strengthen multidisciplinary child-and gender-friendly investigations,which avoid repetitive interviews and re-traumatization of the child in cross-examination, and to strengthen trauma-focused therapy and other support services for children who are victims of violence, in particular sexual violence, including in the home;

To combat sexual exploitation and abuse of children by bringing the relevant legislation in line with international standards and ensuring that victims report such crimes and that the crimes are investigated and perpetrators punished;

To combat harmful practices in the North Caucasus, including femicide, killings committed in the name of so-called “honour”, child marriages, abductions of women and girls for forced marriage, female genital mutilation and polygamy.

Please provide information on measures taken or envisaged:

To support the rights of children to a family environment, further strengthen efforts to reduce the number of forced separations of children from their parents and increase the capacity of social services in the country to provide support and assistance for keeping families together;

To decrease the levels of institutionalization of children, in particular children with disabilities, promote their social integration and prioritize family-based care;

To ensure independent monitoring of alternative care settings, in particular residential care institutions, in a regular and systematic manner and to abolish the preliminary announcement of inspections;

To improve the quality of care in alternative care settings by training personnel and establishing regulations on the rights of children, such as the right to privacy, and to ensure periodic reviews of placements;

To investigate reports of abuse of children in care institutions and prevent children being hospitalized in psychiatric institutions as a punishment for misbehaviour;

To combat the practice in the North Caucasus of separating children from their mothers, after divorce or the husband’s death, and placing them with the husband’s family;

To strengthen the support for independent living for children leaving care, including access to housing;

To ensure that adoption services have the capacity to guarantee that the best interests of the child are paramount in adoption proceedings for national and intercountry adoptions.

Please explain the measures taken or envisaged:

To adopt a human rights-based approach to disability, prevent the institutionalization of children with disabilities, develop community-based support for children with disabilities, in particular for children with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, and their families, and promote the rights of persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the community;

To investigate allegations of ill-treatment and abuse of children with disabilities in institutions, and bring those who are responsible to justice;

To combat prejudices and negative views that lead to discrimination against children with disabilities;

To implement national legal provisions on inclusive education by training teachers, providing schools with the necessary equipment and sensitizing school personnel, children and the public in general to the rights of children with disabilities, with special attention given to children with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities.

Please describe the measures taken or envisaged:

To provide all children, especially migrant and asylum-seeking children, with access to medical assistance, in particular preventive health care and emergency assistance;

To strengthen efforts to prevent suicide among children and adolescents and to prevent drug and alcohol abuse;

To put an end to the coercive treatment of homosexual and transgender persons, in particular children, and to attempts to pathologize gender incongruence as a psychiatric disease;

To guarantee an adequate and sustainable standard of living for all children within the territory of the State party, with particular focus on children in the most marginalized and disadvantaged situations, such as Roma children and children of migrant workers, including irregular migrant workers;

To reduce poverty among children and the socioeconomic impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and related measures on children and their families.

Please describe the measures taken:

To ensure that all children, including children belonging to minority groups, children of irregular migrant workers and asylum-seeking children, have access to free and compulsory education up to the age of 18;

To put an end to the segregation of Roma children and provide them with equal access to quality education in both primary and secondary schools;

To mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the equal access for children in disadvantaged situations to education and to ensure access to digital infrastructure for those children;

To preserve the cultural and linguistic identity and heritage of Indigenous children by ensuring that they receive basic education in their native languages, as well as providing for their rights to food, health and traditional way of life.

Please inform the Committee about efforts made:

To adopt laws establishing a child justice system, including child justice courts with specialized staff and a restorative justice approach;

To put an end to the unlawful or arbitrary detention of children, including administrative detention, and ensure that legal safeguards are guaranteed for all children who are detained;

To reduce the maximum length of pretrial detention and ensure that detention is used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible period of time, and that it is reviewed on a regular basis.

Please explain measures taken to ensure respect for international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the State party’s armed forces in the light of allegations of the killing, injury and torture of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated against children; attacks on schools, hospitals and other civilian facilities; indiscriminate attacks and other violations of international law in situations of armed conflict by the Russian armed forces or affiliated armed groups. Please also indicate what measures the State party has taken to investigate such cases and to bring those responsible to justice. In addition, please inform the Committee of measures taken to prevent children from witnessing the above-mentioned violations of international law.

Please provide information concerning the evacuation and allegations of deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to the territory of the State party, to that of any other States or within the occupied territory of Ukraine by the State party, since 24 February 2022, including on the following:

The number of such children;

Measures taken to ensure that children, in particular separated or unaccompanied children and children in care institutions in Ukraine, including in the occupied territory of Ukraine, are not moved in violation of rights under the Convention or relevant international humanitarian law, including article 49 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and article 78 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts;

Measures taken to ensure that the right of such children to preserve their identity, including nationality, name and family relations, is protected, through a system of identity registration and record-keeping of any changes;

Measures taken to ensure that the whereabouts of such children are identified and tracked so as to enable their return to their families;

The number of children who have acquired Russian citizenship or have renounced their Ukrainian citizenship;

Procedures and safeguards put in place to ensure that Ukrainian children residing, including temporarily, in the territory of State party or the territory of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the State party, are not deprived of their Ukrainian nationality in violation of their rights under the Convention and relevant international law, in particular through applications for Russian citizenship or renouncement of Ukrainian citizenship under the simplified proceduresubmitted by guardians or authorized representatives of orphans or children without parental care.

Please provide information on:

The number of Ukrainian children adopted by Russian families since 24 February 2022;

Measures taken to ensure that the adoption of Ukrainian children in the State party, including of those who have been moved to the territory of the State party from childcare institutions in Ukraine, in violation of rights under the Convention and relevant international law, is not permitted.

With reference to the Committee’s concluding observations on the State party’s initial report on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution and childpornography, please explain the measures taken:

To define and explicitly prohibit and criminalize all offences, in particular all forms of sale of children and child prostitution and all elements of child pornography, in line with articles 2 and 3 of the Optional Protocol;

To prevent all offences under the Optional Protocol, including the sale of children for the purpose of child labour and online child sexual exploitation and abuse;

To establish mechanisms and procedures for the early identification of child victims of offences under the Optional Protocol;

To ensure that children who are victims of offences under the Optional Protocol, including children sexually exploited in prostitution, are not treated as offenders or subjected to sanctions for offences related to their situation, and are given appropriate support and services.

With reference to the Committee’s concluding observations on the State party’s initial report on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict, please describe the measures taken by the State party:

To ensure that children under the age of 18 enrolled in higher military institutions are not the subject of recruitment and use, even when they receive a military education;

To amend the Criminal Code to add provisions that explicitly criminalize the recruitment of all children under the age of 18 by the State party’s armed forces or by non-State armed groups, and the use and involvement of children in hostilities;

To put in place mechanisms to identify at an early stage refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant children coming from countries where there are or have been armed conflicts and who may have been involved in armed conflict, and provide adequate support and reintegration for those children.

Part II

The Committee invites the State party to provide a brief update, of no more than three pages, on the information presented in its report with regard to the following:

(a)New bills or laws, and their respective regulations;

(b)New institutions and their mandates or institutional reforms;

(c)Recently introduced policies, programmes and action plans and their scope and financing;

(d)Recent ratifications of human rights instruments.

Part III

Data, statistics and other information

Please provide consolidated information for the past three years on the budget lines regarding children and the social sectors, indicating the percentage of each budget line in terms of the total national budget and the gross national product. Please also provide information on the geographical allocation of those resources.

Please provide, if available, updated statistical data for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on the following:

Cases of abuse and violence perpetrated against children, including torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, all forms of corporal punishment, sexual abuse in and outside the home, domestic violence, bullying and online sexual violence and abuse, as well as prosecutions and sentences handed down in the State party in such cases;

Cases of conflict-related sexual violence against children committed by the State party’s armed forces in Ukraine andprosecutions and sentences handed down in the State party in such cases;

Cases of child deaths and injuries as a result ofthe State party’s use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas in Ukraine;

Cases of child marriage, femicide, killings committed in the name of so-called “honour” involving children, abductions of girls for forced marriage, female genital mutilation and polygamy;

Cases of adolescent pregnancy;

Stateless children;

Asylum-seeking, refugee, internally displaced and migrant children;

Working children, including in the informal sector;

Children in street situations;

Children living in poverty.

Please provide data for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, socioeconomic background, ethnic origin, national origin and geographical location, regarding the situation of children deprived of a family environment, on the number of children who are or who have been:

Separated from their families, including data on the duration of the separation;

Placed in institutions, as well as the number of institutions and data on children by institution;

Placed with foster families;

Available for adoption;

Adopted domestically and through intercountry adoptions, if any, including data on the receiving countries.

Please provide data for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of disability, ethnic origin, national origin and geographical location, on the number of children with disabilities who are or who have been:

Living with their families;

Living in institutions;

Attending day care;

Attending preschool;

Attending primary schools;

Attending secondary schools;

Receiving individualized support;

Attending special schools;

Out of school;

Abandoned by their families.

Please provide, if available, updated statistical data for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of offence, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on children in conflict with the law who have been:

Arrested;

Referred to diversion programmes;

Held in pretrial detention;

Detained with adults;

Convicted and serving a sentence in detention, with data further disaggregated by the length of the sentence.

Please provide information on how a child rights-based approach is integrated into the planning, implementation and monitoring of measures for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including with regard to the participation of children and data collection, and how those measures promote the realization of children’s rights under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto.

Please provide the Committee with an update of any data in the report that may have become outdated by more recent data collected or other new developments.

In addition, the State party may list areas affecting children that it considers to be of priority with regard to the implementation of the Convention.