Ukraine

One of the aims of the Childhood without Abuse Project was to strengthen child protection systems in the countries participating in the project - Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. As a step toward diagnosing the systems and changes that has been introduced so far, flow charts of child protection system in each country have been created by the organizations participating in the project.

On 27th May 2009 child-friendly interviewing room was opened by Child Well-Being Fund Ukraine in Kyiv. The creation of such room in Ukraine became possible as a result of cooperation of Child Well-Being Fund and Nobody's Children Foundation from Poland in the frame of "Childhood without Abuse - Toward a Better Child Protection System in Eastern Europe" project and with the financial support of Bread for the World (Germany).

According to news portal UAUA.INFO, exploiting small children for begging in the streets is thriving in the biggest cities of Ukraine. It appears that it is all based on begging business chain, where the youngest are the most valuable. The younger the child is, the more profit it can generate. Police data show that in 2004 there were 1500 criminal investigations related to involving children in begging.

The topic of the event was "Children rights: twenty years of work" and it was organized on the occasion of 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.