The slaughter of the civilian population of Mariupol has reached a catastrophic scale. Today Russian troops targeted and destroyed the Mariupol City Hospital №3, including a children’s clinic and the maternity hospital №2. The death toll is unspecified at this time. The bomber struck shortly after midday in front of a maternity hospital, killing doctors and other medical personnel, women in labour and newborns delivered just last night. Some of them were about to see this world, and their mothers were in the delivery room.
We The Ukrainian National Center for Peacebuilding and The Charitable organization «Charity foundation «East-SOS» appeal to the international community, the European Union, NATO Member States, international humanitarian and judicial organizations, and the Governments of democratic countries to prevent the killing of 400,000 civilians in Mariupol by:
- demanding that the Russian Federation cease shelling of civilian objects in Ukraine
- ensuring compliance with this requirement by closing the skies over Ukraine
- providing security guarantees for the evacuation of civilians through humanitarian corridors from besieged cities, which are on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe
- enabling the restoration of critical civilian infrastructure in these settlements.
Despite the interim decision of the European Court of Human Rights of 1 March 2022 in Ukraine v. Russia, where, “the Court decided, in the interests of the parties and the proper conduct of the proceedings, to order to the Government of Russia to abstain from military attacks against civilians and civilian objects, including residential facilities, emergency services vehicles and other specially protected civilian objects such as schools and hospitals, and to ensure the security of the ambulance personnel and vehicles within the territory under attack or siege by Russian troops.” – The Russian Federation continues to attack protected sites.
The city of Mariupol, populated with about 400,000 residents, has been being besieged by the Russian armed forces for ten days. The city is cut off from electricity, water and gas supplies, mobile connection and TV signal. The city borders the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region. The armed forces of the Russian Federation continue to consistently destroy the entire civilian infrastructure of the city of many thousands, along with its inhabitants.
Hundreds of people call humanitarian organizations helplines daily. People are searching for their relatives from Mariupol and trying to find out if they are alive because they cannot contact them or travel to the city to rescue loved ones on their own.
Mariupol’s public authorities lack capacity to draw up documents proving the facts of death, as the death toll is growing dramatically. It is impossible to identify the killed and injured under the constant heavy artillery shelling. Doctors make paper records themselves to restore them afterwards in the registers.
It is impossible to deliver essential goods to the city, such as drinking water, food and medicine. Humanitarian cargoes are fired at and completely blocked by the Russian Federation’s armed forces. The city is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale for 2022.
The agreements between the Ukrainian and Russian sides about humanitarian corridors – evacuation routes to Zaporizhzhia were not implemented because Russian Federation’s armed forces grossly violated international humanitarian law by firing civilians moving through the corridor using volley fire.
On March 8, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights applied Rule 39 to the Russian Federation, which obliges Russia to “ensure unimpeded access of the civilian population
to safe evacuation routes, healthcare, food and other essential supplies, the rapid and unconstrained passage of humanitarian aid and the movement of humanitarian workers.”
Russia brutally ignores this ruling, as well as previous ones and its obligations under International Law.
We demand to close the sky over Ukraine, provide security guarantees for the evacuation of civilians through humanitarian corridors from besieged cities, and ensure the opportunity to restore the critical civilian infrastructure of Ukrainian cities.
#NOflyZoneUA
#StopRussianAgression
#StandWithUkraine
