In framework of permanent co-operation with UN authorized bodies and officials our Association sent submission to Dr. Farida Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education for her report intending to identify the current main challenges to the right to education today and the crucial issues that deserve attention for the future.
ARC’s submission, prepared by professor Borys Babin and published on UN web-sources in May, 2023, stressed that in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine the so-called “Russian standards” of education established that reject the issues of human rights education and includes strong illegal Russia’s militaristic propaganda, propaganda of so-called “priority” of “Russian world” in standards of Nazi policy, hate speech against ethnic Ukrainians and elements of racial discrimination.
ARC’s submission added that some teachers of Ukrainian schools in Russia-occupied Ukraine’s mainland areas were kidnapped by Russian troops and some teachers from Crimea were ‘punished’ and “dismissed” by Russia-controlled criminal “administration” for their position against Russia’s war propaganda in local ‘schools’, examples of Said Asanov and Susanna Bezazieva were mentioned.
Submission pointed that some thousands of Ukrainian minors from Russia-occupied Ukraine’s mainland areas were transferred illegally to Russia-occupied Crimea and to Russia itself since summer, 2022; and were kept without adequate education.
ARC informed Special Rapporteur that Russian illegal “educational policy” includes punishment for the youth and their parents for attempts to get distance Ukrainian education on-line. Also schools in Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories, especially in relevant parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions are used criminally by Russian invaders as places of disposition Russian troops and ammunition, school libraries are criminally destroyed or censured by Russian occupiers against any literature on Ukrainian language and about Ukraine.
Those criminal steps of Russian invaders brutally violate the principles of availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of education, ARC stressed in our submission.
