Side event to the 24th Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
🗓 5 December 2025
🕐 13:15 – 14:45
📍 Mississippi Room, World Forum, The Hague
Global Rights Compliance (GRC) is honoured to co-host, together with Ukraine, a side event at ASP24 examining one of the most urgent global crises: the disappearance of children in conflict.
Across Ukraine, Sudan, and Syria, children have been, and continue to be, abducted, unlawfully transferred, forcibly disappeared, or separated from their families under conditions that violate international law. While these children share the devastating experience of disappearance, the nature of the crimes differs across conflict settings:
🔹 Ukraine: Russia’s state policy of large-scale child deportation has resulted in at least 19,546 documented cases, with many more likely unrecorded. Children have been illegally placed for adoption, transferred into Russian families, or sent to re-education camps aimed at erasing their Ukrainian identity.
🔹 Sudan: Amidst the escalating violence in Sudan, children are the most vulnerable to all forms of violence and childhoods have been systematically destroyed. Girls as young as five have been abducted and forcibly disappeared by armed groups, including the Rapid Support Forces, with their fate and whereabouts still unknown. Enforced disappearance of girls in Sudan is highly gendered, linked to underlying gender inequalities and used to facilitate sexual and gender-based violence.
🔹 Syria: As the crimes of the former regime come to light, children remain missing and separated from their families who desperately continue to search for them. Thousands of Syrian children were abducted, conscripted and disappeared within the detention system. Hundreds of children were separated from their families by the Assad regime, and vanished within a network of orphanages.
The consequences for children are profound — trauma, disrupted education, identity loss — and the impact on families and communities, trapped in uncertainty and grief, is devastating.
Despite historical documentation dating back to World War II, crimes related to child disappearances remain vastly under-prosecuted. This global criminal phenomenon demands a global response.
This ASP side event will bring together justice actors, civil society, and survivor networks to:
- spotlight the stories of disappeared children
- elevate awareness of this global pattern of abuse
- strengthen victim-centred strategies for justice and accountability
Agenda
His Excellency Mr Andriy Kostin, Ambassador of Ukraine to the Netherlands will make opening remarks, followed by a video testimonial of survivors and family members.
Speakers:
- Hala Turjman, Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic
- Alla Perfetska, Voices of Children, Ukraine
- Ikhlass Ahmed Altaher Eisa, Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA)
- Diane Marie Amann, University of Georgia School of Law and University College London Faculty of Laws
Wayne Jordash KC, President of Global Rights Compliance Foundation will provide moderation.
See the concept note for the event here.