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Save the Children says at least ten children have been killed by shelling in Ukraine by Russia, which has targeted six schools in that country, with the NGO calling for an immediate end to the war to protect minors from violence and infringement of their rights.
In a statement, it says that the attacks on Ukrainian schools endanger the lives of the country’s 7.5 million children and insists that they must be “safe and inviolable” spaces for both children and teachers, “with special protection even in a scenario of conflict.”
The NGO confirms the death of at least ten minors and stresses that the latest data from the United Nations indicate that at least six educational centers have been bombed in recent days.
It reports that two teachers were killed on Friday when a missile hit a school in Horlivka, in eastern Ukraine, and the UN has also confirmed, according to the NGO, the attack on a kindergarten and an orphanage in the northeastern town of Okhtyrka, with a seven-year-old girl among the six people killed there.
Save the Children recalls that attacks against schools and hospitals are classified by the UN as one of the six grave violations committed against children.
In the statement, it collects the statements of Eva, a 15-year-old girl who managed to flee her village with her parents and was going to one of the bombed schools.
“My grandparents, many children, my classmates, the elderly, and people who have no possibility of leaving have had to stay in the village, where every second house has been damaged,” the young woman laments.
For all these reasons, the director of Save the Children for Eastern Europe, Irina Saghoyan, has called for “the immediate cessation of hostilities, as the only way to protect children from violence and other violations of their rights.”
Saghoyan emphasized that schools “must not become battlefields where wars are fought” because “students are the victims.”
In this regard, he stressed that the protection of civilians and essential civilian infrastructures, such as schools and hospitals, “must be the absolute priority of all parties: it is their legal obligation to minimize the suffering of civilians.”
