“There are credible allegations of the forced transfer of unaccompanied Ukrainian children to Russian-occupied territories or to the Russian Federation itself,” said UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Elsie Brands-Keres.

She stressed during a UN Security Council meeting on forced displacement in Ukraine that “we are concerned that the Russian authorities have adopted a simplified procedure for granting Russian citizenship to children who are not under parental care, and of these children will be adopted by Russian families.” She pointed out that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was able to “confirm” that “verification” centers had been set up in the Russian armed forces, where security checks and the collection of personal and biometric data were carried out.

Keres stressed that “we are concerned that such checks and subsequent arrests are carried out outside any legal framework and do not respect the principles of necessity and proportionality”, noting “reliable information about the presence of numerous human rights violations” in these centers.

She explained that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was able to “document” cases where people were physically searched while passing through “sorting” centers, indicating that some of them were sometimes forced to comply with these searches naked, stating that “we especially concerned about the risk of sexual violence women and girls face during these screening procedures.”