A Brussels installation turns scorched phones into a call to action, pressuring EU institutions to demand the verified return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian students arrived in Brussels as part of the international advocacy campaign \u201cHot Challenges to Human Rights\u201d with the aim of supporting the return of children abducted by Russia and raising attention to this issue at the European level.<\/p>\n
As part of the tour, representatives of the Kyiv, Uzhhorod, and Lviv branches of the Ukrainian Academy of Leadership organized an installation in Brussels to draw the attention of European citizens and to intensify pressure on European institutions to return thousands of Ukrainian children who were forcibly deported by the aggressor state.<\/p>\n
According to the organizers and participants of the tour, the installation depicts burning lines \u2013 a symbol of passivity and wasted time, which leads to a rupture in ties with the abducted children. Charred phones are planned to be placed in 14 cities across 9 EU countries.<\/p>\n
At the center of the exhibit is a working phone, through which citizens can directly call the European Parliament and demand the return of the abducted Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n
The campaign turns EU citizens into a tool of political pressure, inviting them to directly contact European institutions with a clear demand: to document the verified return of Ukrainian children as an unconditional prerequisite for any future peace settlements and to ensure immediate, unobstructed, and regular access by international organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UNICEF, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to all deported and forcibly displaced Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n
Organizers remind that, according to official data from Ukraine, more than 1.6 million Ukrainian children remain under Russia\u2019s control, and only about 2,100 of them have managed to return home.<\/p>\n
Studies show that many children are kept in the system of the so-called \u201cre-education,\u201d military training, and forced Russification in facilities designed for the long-term stay of tens of thousands of children, with an emphasis on erasing identity and severing ties with their families.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, this campaign is about responsibility and urgency. Behind every number stands a child whose future is being taken away right now as a result of Russia\u2019s genocidal war against Ukraine \u2013 the deliberate destruction of children\u2019s identity and rights. And this time is inexorably vanishing. A phone call is a simple, but extremely important choice not to stay silent when time runs out. The return of Ukrainian children must become an unconditional demand in any peace decisions \u2013 action must be taken now. This is the shared responsibility of the democratic world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yevheniia Mateichuk<\/p>\n
During the opening of the installation, Ukraine\u2019s representative to the EU, Vsevolod Chentsov, thanked the young Ukrainians for their activity and involvement, and stressed that the EU should actively use diplomatic channels to bring third countries and international organizations into the coalition for the return of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n
The \u201cHot Challenges to Human Rights\u201d campaign is implemented in partnership with the creative agency Bickerstaff and the Bring Kids Back organization.<\/p>\n
In previous campaign events in April at the European Parliament, they presented an installation dedicated to the stories of abducted Ukrainian children as part of Bird of Light Ukraine\u2019s Empty Beds project and the initiative \u201cDeported Ukrainian Children: A Call to Action\u201d.<\/p>\n
The installation is a carefully recreated full-scale bedroom, \u201cfrozen\u201d at the moment of the child\u2019s abduction by Russians, inviting visitors to dive into the story of 13-year-old Artem, a character created based on the testimonies of children taken from temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The boy dreamed of becoming an architect and building a new Ukraine; at 13, he was taken to Crimea \u2013 and he never returned.<\/p>\n
Such actions demonstrate the ongoing commitment of youth and international support to bringing all Ukrainian children home.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian students in Brussels call on Europeans to help bring back the children abducted by Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brussels installation turns scorched phones into a call to action, pressuring EU institutions to demand the verified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[35746,35745,211,35747,210,35748,35749,38,35750],"class_list":{"0":"post-65032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brussels","8":"tag-abducted-children","9":"tag-abducted-children-brussels-installation-ukrainian-students-bring-kids-back-eu-advocacy","10":"tag-belgium","11":"tag-bring-kids-back","12":"tag-brussels","13":"tag-brussels-installation","14":"tag-eu-advocacy","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-ukrainian-students"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116440478953007172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}