January 10, 2024
Rosemary DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, said that “the new year has brought no respite to Ukraine”.
The country has been suffering some of the worst attacks since the beginning of the illegal war. Over the holiday period, the Russian Federation’s missiles and drones targeted numerous locations across the country, including in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Cherkasy, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine.
Since the start of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified 29,579 civilian casualties with 10,242 people killed, including 575 children. Between 29 December 2023 and 2 January 2024 alone, OHCHR recorded 519 civilian casualties, including 96 people killed.
The war’s impact on children is particularly appalling, she warned. Since the conflict started, nearly two thirds of Ukraine’s children have been forced to flee their homes. An estimated 1.5 million children are at risk of post-traumatic stress and other mental health conditions.
Moscow’s recent attacks damaged or destroyed at least eight schools and 10 health-care facilities, including a maternity hospital. In total, 7,000 schools remain inaccessible to children, restricting their right to education. However, amid the nearly unrelenting grim news from the war, one recent development stood out as positive, she said, citing a long-awaited exchange of more than 200 prisoners of war between both sides on 3 January — the largest such exchange since February 2022.
She pointed out that the Council has already met more than 100 times in various formats to discuss the war’s harrowing consequences. The 15-member organ has heard numerous testimonies about the horrors endured by Ukrainian civilians. “We have consistently voiced clear warnings about the risks of further escalation and spill-over outside Ukraine’s borders and even beyond,” she said, warning: “And yet, here we are, on the brink of the third year of the gravest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War — with no end in sight”.
The toll of this senseless war in death, destruction and destabilization is already catastrophic, she lamented, expressing her steadfast commitment to support all meaningful endeavours aimed at a just, sustainable, and comprehensive peace in line with the Charter of the United Nations, international law and the relevant General Assembly resolutions.