Latest news with #ConflictObservatory
Washington Post
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Trump reverses termination of program tracking mass child abductions in Ukraine
The Trump administration reversed its decision to terminate a U.S. initiative that documented alleged Russian war crimes on Thursday following reporting by The Washington Post and other media outlets, according to U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter. The initiative, known as the Conflict Observatory, tracked the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian-controlled territory using satellite imagery, biometric data and other digital forensic tools — which contributed to multiple criminal cases, including the International Criminal Court's landmark indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
USA Today
28-03-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
US to provide short-term funding for program tracking abducted Ukrainian children
US to provide short-term funding for program tracking abducted Ukrainian children WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that short-term funding was being given to an initiative documenting abducted Ukrainian children, after Republican President Donald Trump's administration decided to pause the program on January 25. The U.S. government-funded initiative led by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab helped track thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The decision to terminate the program, called the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, came after Trump ordered a broad review to prevent what he says is wasteful spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars with causes that do not align with American interests. Ukraine says that more than 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory during the war in Ukraine without the consent of family or guardians, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide. Russia has said it has been evacuating people voluntarily and to protect vulnerable children from the war zone. More: Project that tracks Ukrainian kids kidnapped by Russia defunded by Trump administration "Funding is being provided for a short period while the Conflict Observatory implementers ensure the proper transfer of the critical data on the children to the appropriate authorities," a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday. "It is part of the standard close-out procedures for terminated programs." More: Ukrainian children taken to Russia brings back fear, memories of a similar Nazi effort Earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration to restore the program. The program's end raised concerns about the potential loss of access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and other data, about some 30,000 children taken from Ukraine. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportation of the children. Russia denounced the warrants as "outrageous and unacceptable." (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Ross Colvin and Saad Sayeed)
New York Times
28-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Rubio Says Information on Abducted Ukrainian Children Will Be Preserved
The State Department has preserved information on Ukrainian children abducted by the Russian government during its war in Ukraine that lawmakers feared had been deleted, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday night. Researchers at Yale University, who were tracking tens of thousands of abducted Ukrainian children, had created a database as one project under the Biden administration State Department's Conflict Observatory program. In addition to tracking potential war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, the Conflict Observatory tracked the civil war in Sudan. Lawmakers feared that the database on the Ukrainian children had been deleted when the State Department cut funding for the group tracking the abductions. 'The data is secure,' Mr. Rubio told reporters on his plane flying from Suriname to Miami at the end of a three-nation tour of the Caribbean and South America. He said the database would be transferred to 'the appropriate party,' without specifying who, and that the program would no longer operate because the funding had been cut as part of a halt to almost all foreign aid when President Trump took office in January. The data is likely to be transferred to the International Criminal Court and Europol, Europe's main law enforcement agency. The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, which was tracking the abductions, had counted more than 30,000 children taken from Ukraine to places including Russia and Belarus since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. When the funding ended in January, the lab had put information into the database on thousands of children, including detailed dossiers on more than 300 of them, traced to Russia's coercive adoption system. Ukrainian officials say Russia has abducted 20,000 children from the country. In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and an aide, accusing them of war crimes over the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children. The Kremlin has denied accusations of war crimes but has not been secretive about the transfers of Ukrainian children to Russia. The Yale lab had intended to hand the database over to Europol and the International Criminal Court. In addition to the arrest warrant for Mr. Putin over the deportations, the court also issued one for an aide, Maria Lvova-Belova. The purpose of the database is to help the court bring charges against more Russian officials. This month, U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Mr. Rubio asking about the status of the project and saying they had heard the database might have been deleted after the funding was stopped. The Conflict Observatory program the Yale lab was working with is supposed to remain operational for six weeks to give experts time to transfer the database. The main contractor for the program was the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit that often does work for U.S. intelligence agencies. The Yale lab was a subcontractor under MITRE. Congress had allocated funding for the project from 2022 to this year. After lawmakers expressed worries about the database, MITRE said in a statement that it had not been deleted and was in the hands of another specialist group.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US to provide short-term funding for program tracking abducted Ukrainian children
By Daphne Psaledakis and Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that short-term funding was being given to an initiative documenting abducted Ukrainian children, after Republican President Donald Trump's administration decided to pause the program on January 25. The U.S. government-funded initiative led by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab helped track thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The decision to terminate the program, called the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, came after Trump ordered a broad review to prevent what he says is wasteful spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars with causes that do not align with American interests. Ukraine says that more than 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory during the war in Ukraine without the consent of family or guardians, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide. Russia has said it has been evacuating people voluntarily and to protect vulnerable children from the war zone. "Funding is being provided for a short period while the Conflict Observatory implementers ensure the proper transfer of the critical data on the children to the appropriate authorities," a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday. "It is part of the standard close-out procedures for terminated programs." Earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration to restore the program. The program's end raised concerns about the potential loss of access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and other data, about some 30,000 children taken from Ukraine. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportation of the children. Russia denounced the warrants as "outrageous and unacceptable."
Reuters
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US to provide short-term funding for program tracking abducted Ukrainian children
WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that short-term funding was being given to an initiative documenting abducted Ukrainian children, after Republican President Donald Trump's administration decided to pause the program on January 25. The U.S. government-funded initiative led by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab helped track thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. The decision to terminate the program, called the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, came after Trump ordered a broad review to prevent what he says is wasteful spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars with causes that do not align with American interests. Ukraine says that more than 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory during the war in Ukraine without the consent of family or guardians, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide. Russia has said it has been evacuating people voluntarily and to protect vulnerable children from the war zone. "Funding is being provided for a short period while the Conflict Observatory implementers ensure the proper transfer of the critical data on the children to the appropriate authorities," a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday. "It is part of the standard close-out procedures for terminated programs." Earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers called on the Trump administration to restore the program. The program's end raised concerns about the potential loss of access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and other data, about some 30,000 children taken from Ukraine. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportation of the children. Russia denounced the warrants as "outrageous and unacceptable."
