Torture and ill-treatment of children in Ukraine

The protection of children, strengthening and ensuring of their rights play an increasingly important role in the social life of the country and becomes an important guideline in the activities of civil society and the state. The child turns into a special subject of numerous public relations and, at the same time, s/he is limited in her/his opportunities and interests. Moreover, the children due to their psycho-physiological properties could much easier fall victim to abuse and ill-treatment by adults. That is why the protection of the child must become a separate field of activities of special public institutions with specific statutory regulations. The child protection is the most important in cases, when minors become a party to criminal procedural legal relationship or find themselves in an unfriendly environment and under pressure from other people. This publication presents the results of research and analysis conducted by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) in 2012 in the framework of the project “Protecting children from torture and ill-treatment in Ukraine” supported by the Democracy Grant Program of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and in the framework of the joint project of the European Commission and UNICEF “Achieving the greatest consolidation of reforms in the criminal justice system for children in order to combat torture and other forms of child abuse in post-Soviet countries.” The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine also sponsored the translation of research results into English, publishing of Ukrainian and English versions of the report on the results of research, as well as public events intended to publicize the results.