A child’s right to access justice means not only the ability to go to court, but also real access to legal information, extrajudicial protection mechanisms and services that are sensitive to the child’s age and needs. An analytical review by the NGO “Article 3” shows that Ukraine has a fragmented system of institutions and initiatives. However, the lack of a systematic approach, adaptation for vulnerable groups, and full interagency coordination create numerous barriers for children in need of protection.
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Informing children about their rights: available resources and gaps
Ukrainian national documents recognise the importance of legal education, but its implementation remains fragmented. The last national action plan for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was in effect from 2018 to 2021 and did not include a separate strategy for increasing children’s legal awareness; as of June 2025, no updated plan had been adopted. At the same time, the National Human Rights Strategy identifies the problem of low awareness of children’s rights, but does not set out clear objectives and indicators for addressing it. These gaps reinforce the dependence of the quality of legal education on the initiatives of individual schools, teachers or civil society organisations.
The school curriculum includes courses in civic education and law at various stages of education, but the lack of mandatory qualification requirements for law teachers and the abolition of the state final examination in this subject reduce its effectiveness. Many useful online and printed resources simply do not reach their target audience or are not adapted to the age and developmental characteristics of children.
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Protection system and lack of unified support for children’s cases
Ukraine has a wide network of institutions — child welfare services, legal aid centres, courts, guardianship and custody authorities, law enforcement agencies and NGOs — but the lack of a single regulatory mechanism defining the procedure for interaction between them complicates the comprehensive support of children’s cases. This means that children and families often have to deal with several services without a single case manager to coordinate both legal and social assistance. The result is fragmented assistance, with children sometimes not receiving legal assistance or, conversely, social services not reaching those who need them.
In response to this problem, elements of interagency coordination have been partially incorporated into government acts and projects; in particular, the Procedure for the implementation of a pilot project of child protection centres based on the Barnahus model has been approved, which provides for an interdisciplinary approach and a team coordinator. However, this is still a pilot format and does not cover all categories of cases.
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Child-friendly justice and judicial safeguards
Cases involving children are mainly heard by general courts; there are no specialised juvenile courts in Ukraine, although there is a gradual specialisation of judges and pilot initiatives to train and implement child-friendly justice standards. At the national level, there are established deadlines and requirements for the urgent consideration of cases involving children, but in practice, these deadlines are often violated due to the failure of parties to appear, motions, and other procedural delays. European standards emphasise that priority and expediency in consideration are key to protecting family life and the interests of the child.
The law allows children aged 14 and older to go to court on certain issues on their own, and those aged 16 and older to initiate issues related to marriage and civil capacity; at the same time, in many real-life situations, the participation of legal representatives remains mandatory, which complicates access to protection when the legal representative is the source of the harm.
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Extrajudicial mechanisms and inclusiveness for vulnerable groups
Extrajudicial instruments — appeals to authorities, mediation, social services, legal aid centres, public organisations — play an important role in ensuring access to protection without lengthy court proceedings. Free legal aid centres perform educational functions and are gradually introducing sign language interpretation services, but such services are still in the development stage and are often not specifically adapted for children. Materials for children with disabilities (Braille, videos with sign language interpretation, easy language) are rare, and coordination between education, health care and social services is usually insufficient.
The situation is particularly critical in closed or small communities and institutions (boarding schools, colonies), where access to independent law enforcement may be complicated by local connections and risks for the child who reports the abuse. The examples described in the report illustrate how the vulnerability of the environment can turn a child’s initiative to report abuse into a risk to the child themselves.
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War, information threats and recruitment: new challenges for justice for children
The full-scale war has created additional risks: representatives of the aggressor state are recruiting teenagers via messengers and social networks, offering financial rewards for arson or sabotage. The document cites an example from a decision by the Podilskyi District Court of Kropyvnytskyi regarding an attempt to recruit via Telegram. The document also refers to data on more than 450 people detained in 2024 for arson coordinated by Russian curators. This poses a challenge for the system to simultaneously protect children from exploitation and apply age-appropriate legal measures.
In response, information and prevention campaigns were launched, including initiatives by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Internal Affairs as part of the joint “Safe School” programme and information campaigns by the Security Service of Ukraine. However, interruptions to the educational process and educational losses make it difficult to reach children with such measures and increase the need for flexible formats of legal education.
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Recommendations and implementation paths — from pilots to systemic solutions
The authors of the review propose a series of steps aimed at systematising children’s access to justice: recognise legal education for children as a national priority with appropriate funding; create accessible, adapted digital and offline courses on children’s rights; introduce mechanisms for appointing a specialist support person (case manager) for each child’s case; ensure independent access to legal aid when a legal representative acts contrary to the interests of the child; scale up Barnahus-type pilots and child-friendly justice standards. All these recommendations emphasise that technical tools (chatbots, online forms) must be combined with high-quality interagency coordination and training of specialists.
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