HRL Executive Director Testifies to U.N. Security Council < Yale School of Public Health
Remarks by Nathaniel A. Raymond, Executive Director, Humanitarian Research Lab to the United Nations Security Council (as delivered) 04 December 2024 Thank you, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, President of the Security Council, and representatives of member states for allowing me to brief you this morning.
Yesterday, our team released Russia’s Systematic Program of Coerced Adoption and Fostering of Ukraine’s Children, the latest report from the US State Department-supported Conflict Observatory program. It is the findings of this over twenty month long investigation which utilizes the collection and analysis of open source data and commercially available satellite imagery that I am here to discuss with you specifically today. The Humanitarian Research Lab’s inquiry identified 314 children from Ukraine that, following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of the country, have been placed in this systematic, Kremlin-directed program of coerced adoption and fostering. These identifications resulted from cross-corroboration of multiple points of data to a high confidence standard, including– but not limited to– photographs, travel itineraries, physical characteristics, official Russian documents, and other specific details related to each child. At the heart of our investigation, is the discovery of three interconnected Russia-affiliated child placement databases in which children from Ukraine were placed for adoption or fostering as if they were an orphan from Russia. In one case the database involved was financially supported by President Putin’s office itself….
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