In late April 2022, Disability Rights International (DRI) brought a team of people with disabilities and family activists, including medical and disability service experts, to visit Ukraine’s institutions for children with disabilities.  DRI visited three facilities for children aged six to adult, and one “baby” home for children from birth to age six.  DRI finds that Ukraine’s children with disabilities with the greatest support needs are living in atrocious conditions – entirely overlooked by major international relief agencies and receiving little support from abroad.  

This report, Forgotten Children of Serbia, is based on findings of investigations conducted from 2019 to the present by DRI and the Mental Disability Rights Initiative of Serbia (MDRI-S) and, focusing especially on children, shows that these human rights concerns have been permitted to continue. The Serbian government has been put on notice about the atrocious conditions, abuse, and torture taking place in its facilities through years of advocacy by DRI, MDRI-S, and other allies and has failed to take action or hold abusers accountable.

This submission focuses on the situation of children in institutions and the status of the deinstitutionalisation process in Ukraine. Disability Rights International (DRI), European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) and Validity Foundation commend the commitment of European Union to promote the fundamental rights for persons with disabilities and in particular its commitment to deinstitutionalisation of children globally.