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.  

The Russian Federation has inherited from the Soviet Union an extensive institutional system of services and education for children that unnecessarily and improperly segregates them from society. The vast majority of children we observed within Russia's institutions and special schools could live, grow, develop, receive an education, and maintain family ties in a more integrated community environment.