This is Human Rights Watch's submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's 94th pre-session to highlight areas of concern regarding the government of Russia’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The lower house of the Russian parliament on Thursday passed a bill banning foreigners from using Russian surrogate mothers.

This is an interview with Dragana Ciric Milovanovic, director of European Programs for Disability Rights International (DRI), during the European Launch of the Deinstitutionalization Guidelines, including in emergencies.

New data published by the Office for National Statistics has found that children in care were more at risk of interacting with the criminal justice system during early adulthood than their peers. More than half (52%) of looked-after children had a criminal conviction by the age of 24 years compared with 13% of children who had not been in care.

This report highlights the recommendations and priorities that EU decision-makers and national governments can do to support the most vulnerable children and prevent widening inequalities. 

Official figures suggest that over 400 children have been killed and 850 wounded since Russia invaded its neighbor. Another 3,000 have been left without parental care for one reason or another, while about 100,000 minors have had to leave the institutions, such as internat boarding schools, many of which closed when the war began. With 702 boarding institutions as of early 2022, Ukraine held the largest number of children in institutional care in Europe before the war.

KHERSON, Ukraine — Hours after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, health staff at a children's hospital in the south started secretly planning how to save the babies. Russians were suspected of seizing orphan children and sending them to Russia, so staff at the children's regional hospital in Kherson city began fabricating orphans' medical records to make it appear like they were too ill to move.

Almost 20% of unaccompanied child migrants from Albania taken in by Kent County Council this year have disappeared, the BBC has found. The local authority took in 197 Albanian children up to 31 October, 39 of whom have gone missing.

Ofsted is introducing a new, separate judgement to the framework for inspecting local authority children’s services (ILACS) specifically about the experiences and progress of care leavers.

The murders of two children revealed shocking shortcomings in the UK’s social care system. This article unpacks what is being done about it.