In early December, Andrij Dobriansky, Director of the UWC Mission to the UN, Member of the UWC Human Rights Commission and Mariia Kupriianova, UWC Executive Director, participated in the Fourteenth session of the UN Forum on Minority Issues that was dedicated to conflict prevention and the protection of the human rights of minorities.
Remarks from UWC Human Rights Commission, chaired by Borys Wrzesnewskyj, were prepared and sent to the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes.
«According to official state censuses between 2002 and 2010, roughly 35%, or over 1 million ethnic Ukrainians in Russia, have disappeared. How do you make an ethnic group disappear? Over the past 15 years and at progressively increasing rates, Ukrainian civic, cultural and religious organizations throughout various regions of the Russian Federation have been liquidated, depriving the Ukrainian ethnic minority of institutional or organizational frameworks and of any opportunities to study their native language, or to pass along and maintain their cultural practices», it is said in the remarks.
The Ukrainian World Congress calls upon the international community to address this lawless extremism and help stop this ethnocidal plan to eliminate millions of Ukrainians.
Read the full text of the remarks to the UN Special Rapporteur in Ukrainian, English.
Background: The UWC Human Rights Commission works to inform the international community and raise awareness about the human rights abuses that are occurring in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. It also monitors the general human rights situation in the countries where Ukrainians reside and leads the UWC’s international advocacy efforts to protect their human and collective rights.
