The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed concern about the effects of the war on Ukraine to orphaned children, calling on Kyiv to “immediately” reform the system governing child protection institutions.

“The war meant that many children living in structures were forced to seek shelter from shelling in basements, without electricity or running water for weeks,” HRW said in a report today.

According to the NGO, “dozens of Ukrainian orphanages have been damaged or destroyed” since the start of the war a year ago, and “many children have been removed en masse” to other parts of Ukraine, as well as abroadmainly in neighboring Poland.

In these circumstances, HRW calls on the government of Ukraine to proceed “immediately” with the “reforms it has committed to carry out in child protection institutions”.

The NGO is also calling for better “monitoring and assessment” of orphaned children, some of whom suffer from severe psychological traumawhile complaining about “the lack of staff and resources to do this”.

The Observatory calls on Kiev’s Western allies, who fund Ukraine’s social system, “to support the implementation of these goals” and to adopt “a coordinated strategy to ensure the well-being of children”, notably by recommending of a working group with the UN responsible for the matter.

Funding and donations should “support the return of children to their parents and other family contexts and not directly to orphanages,” HRW stresses.

As of February 24, 2022, “more than 4,500” young Ukrainians living in structures “moved abroad.”

According to official figures released by the NGO, before the start of the Russian invasion there were more than 105,000 orphans and children living in structures in Ukraine, “the largest number in Europe, after Russia.”