US temporarily restores funding for the program that tracks kidnapped Ukrainian children

For the time being, the US has reinstated financing to find kidnapped Ukrainian children.

After the Trump administration put a halt to the program earlier this year, the US State Department said Thursday that it had provided short-term support to an effort that documents the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

With funding from the US government and under the direction of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, the program had played a key role in locating thousands of Ukrainian children who had been forcibly transported to Russia. On January 25, nevertheless, it was canceled as part of a larger assessment that President Donald Trump had mandated to reduce what he views as wasteful federal expenditure.

The practice is a war crime that satisfies the UN treaty definition of genocide, according to Ukraine, which has alleged that more than 19,500 children have been kidnapped and transported to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the agreement of their families. To shield children from the conflict, Russia asserts that it has been willingly relocating them.

The program will be able to provide the relevant authorities with vital information about the kidnapped children, according to a State Department spokesman who confirmed the temporary financing. The representative stated, “It is a component of the typical close-out procedures for terminated programs.”

Democratic lawmakers in particular criticized the administration for stopping the project and pushed it to re-establish financing. Up to 30,000 Ukrainian children were abducted to Russia, and there had been worries that important proof, like as satellite images and other data, would be lost.

International disapproval of the matter has been made. A warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova was issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2023 in connection with the deportation of Ukrainian children. Considering the warrants “outrageous and unacceptable,” Russia rejected them.

Uncertainty surrounds the program’s permanent reinstatement, but the temporary funding guarantees the preservation of critical information.