More than 200,000 Ukrainian children are studying at schools located in close to the front lines of the war in the Donbas, according to the UN children’s fund, or UNICEF.
The proximity of the schools to the fighting leads to psychological trauma and places the children in danger due to unexploded ordnance, the organization said in a statement.
UNICEF and its partners have identified at least eight cases when the Ukrainian military and Russia-backed separatists’ positions are within 500 meters of a kindergarten or school. In two cases, school buildings are only a few meters from militarized sites.
More than 700 schools have been damaged since the war began in 2014, and at least 45 have suffered damage in the last 16 months, according to the organization.
“Children are learning in schools with bullet holes in the walls and sandbags in the windows, bomb shelters in the basements, and shrapnel in school yards,” UNICEF Ukraine Representative Giovanna Barberis said in a statement.
“The education system in eastern Ukraine has been in the crossfire for more than four years. All sides of the conflict must respect international humanitarian law and ensure that schools are safe places for children to learn.”
In April 2017, UNICEF reported that one in four children living near the contact line Ukraine’s conflict-affected Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts require “urgent and sustained psychosocial support to address their traumatic experiences.” Many show symptoms of trauma like severe anxiety, nightmares, aggressive behavior, bedwetting, and withdrawal from family and community life.
In December 2017, UNICEF estimated that one child is killed or wounded by an explosive each week along the contact line.
As a result, some schools in the region have even taken to teaching children how to hide from shelling and avoid landmines.
In March 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that 242 children had been killed in the war since 2014. Previously, in an October 2016 UN Security Council meeting, Verkhovna Rada deputy chair Iryna Herashchenko stated that 68 children have been killed, 152 wounded, 1,937 orphaned and 236,000 displaced as a result of the war.
UNICEF is currently working to provide psychological support and mine risk education in communities near the contact line. It also supports efforts to repair and supply schools in the region.
This year, the organization has appealed for $23.6 million in funding to provide humanitarian assistance to children and families in the region, but has only received 15 percent of the sum so far.
