UNITED NATIONS – The war in Ukraine is a “crisis of children’s rights” where education is under attack, nearly 100 young people have been killed in the past month and millions more have been forced to flee their homes, says the United Nations children’s agency said on Thursday.

Omar Abdi, deputy executive director of UNICEF, told the UN Security Council that children are paying “an unreasonably high price” in the war, with 239 confirmed killed and 355 injured since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24. He said the actual numbers are much higher.

“These attacks must stop,” he said. “At the end of the day, children need to end this war – their future hangs in the balance.”

Abdi said the school year came to a halt after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor and last week at least 15 of 89 UNICEF-supported schools in the east of the country were damaged or destroyed in battle.

“Hundreds of schools across the country are reported to have been hit by heavy artillery, airstrikes and other explosive weapons in populated areas, while other schools are being used as information centres, shelters, supply centers or for military purposes – with long-term impact on getting children back to education,” Abdi said.

As of mid-March, more than 15,000 schools have resumed education in Ukraine, mostly through remote learning or hybrid in-person options, he said. “An estimated 3.7 million children in Ukraine and abroad use online and distance learning options,” he said.

But, Abdi said, “tremendous obstacles” to education remain, including the availability of schools, resources, language barriers and the movement of children and their families. It is estimated that less than 5 percent of preschool-aged refugee children are enrolled in public kindergartens, he said.

Abdi and many council members spoke of what he called a “horrific attack” on a school in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bilohorivka last weekend when a bomb went off. struck as women and children took shelter in the building.

US Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills said the blast killed up to 60 people, including many children. “And reliable reports indicate that when first responders arrived at the school to help the victims of the attack, Russian forces opened fire on them,” he added.

Ukraine’s UN ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said only 30 civilians had been rescued and the school that had once been filled with cheerful children “was turned by a Russian pilot into another mass grave “.

British Ambassador Barbara Woodward says there is evidence ‘that Russia commits four of the Security Council’s six grave violations against children in war’ – violations listed in a 1999 council resolution that condemned targeting of children in conflict and the recruitment and use of children as soldiers.

Woodward cited the killing and maiming of children, the targeting of schools and nurseries, “credible allegations of child sexual abuse by Russian forces” and continuing reports of forced deportations of more than 700,000 people, including many mothers and children, from Ukraine to Russia. .

“There is now a very real risk of a lost generation and a continuing cycle of violence, caused by the invasion of Russia and the devastation it has created,” she said.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said his country’s armed forces were ‘doing everything to protect children during the special military operation in Ukraine’ and called accusations of sexual assault against him ‘absurd’ children.

He said that during the fighting in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2022 between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces, more than 200 educational facilities were damaged, more than half of which were schools and kindergartens. This spring, he said, children in the area known as Donbas are “dying again under Ukrainian shells”.

Nebenzia accused the Ukrainian army of using many buildings and educational institutions as bases, “as a result of which they were significantly damaged”. He said it “endangers children’s lives, deprives them of their right to education and destroys Ukraine’s educational infrastructure”.

Ukraine’s Kyslytsya retorted that “schools should never be attacked or used for military purposes” and told the council that a Russian airstrike on the northeastern town of Novhorod-Siverskyi had destroyed another school Wednesday evening.

“To date, 126 educational institutions have been completely destroyed and another 1,509 have been damaged,” he told the council.

Kyslytsya urged UNICEF, the UN refugee agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross to demand that Russian authorities allow immediate access to thousands of Ukrainian children and adults being taken to Russia. He called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to monitor and report violations against children during the war.