Human Rights Watch (HRW), the widely respected international monitoring organization, is claiming that the Russian occupying authorities in Eastern Ukraine have violated their human rights obligations by suppressing the Ukrainian language and injecting propaganda into educational curricula. It is estimated that about a million Ukrainian children live in the occupied zone.
The report goes on to say that Russian authorities have continued to suppress the Ukrainian language and imposed their own curriculum in the areas occupied since February 2022, when Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine. Changes to the school curriculum include an array of misinformation aimed at justifying Russia’s invasion and portraying Ukraine as a “neo-Nazi state.”
Russian authorities have also introduced military training in school and have required secondary schools to send lists of all students aged 18 and up for conscription into the Russian military, contrary to international law. Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at HRW, argued, “Russia should stop denying Ukrainian children their right to education as guaranteed to them under international law. It should immediately cease attempts to Russify the education system and to carry out political indoctrination in occupied territories of Ukraine.” To make matters worse for the teachers and educational administrators living under occupation, Ukrainian authorities are continuing to punish them for “collaboration activity” by working for occupying authorities, despite their being compelled to do so. Under Ukrainian law, such activity can be punished by corrective labor, arrest, or imprisonment, along with a ban on certain educational roles and activities. The Ukrainian Ministry of Education recently highlighted other disruptions to the nation’s educational system across the country, including challenges with online learning, deteriorating mental health among students and teachers, and negative effects on students with disabilities.
