Lumos Moldova’s role in supporting Ukrainian children, in light of recent ADRC

23.03.2026

Author: Marcel Straton, Country Director for Lumos Moldova.

This month, my colleagues at Lumos attended the UN Human Rights Council Annual Day of the Rights of the Child (ADRC) event in Geneva. This year’s ADRC had a focus on children’s rights in armed conflict.

Joining the Lumos delegate in Geneva were Sofiia (16) and Yevhenii (15), two members of Lumos’ Youth Advisory Board in Ukraine. Here they spoke of the harmful impact that armed conflict has on children’s access to safe and inclusive education.

Children have a right to access education but during an armed conflict this can be seriously disrupted, affecting a child’s ability to learn, grow and develop.  This is especially true for children with disabilities or those with special educational needs. We know that lack of access to safe, inclusive education in their local area is one of the key drivers behind the separation of children from their families and placement in institutional care.

As part of our commitment to ensure every child grows up in a safe and loving family, Lumos Moldova has been supporting refugee children from Ukraine to access education.

In the beginning the main focus was to offer the children and families from Ukraine food and hygiene products, psychological assistance and information on how to access existing services but later, while still continuing to provide this support, the focus gradually shifted towards ensuring social cohesion and community inclusion, helping children to continue their education, be it online with their teachers from Ukraine, or offline – by going to local education institutions (schools, pre-schools).

Throughout the 2025 much work was done to promote the benefits of attending a local school to motivate refugee families to enrol eligible school-aged children into the national education system. This was also the focus of a small project implemented by Lumos in two regions of the country.

To ensure that most of the Ukrainian refugee children in these regions were accessing education services, we engaged with the parents and carers of the children, as well as local public authorities and school staff.  We also used specialist services to understand and address the individual needs of the children to help the transition to a local school. One of the most important elements was to overcome the language barrier by creating opportunities for the children to learn Romanian, the official language of the Republic of Moldova (as most of the schools in the region use this language for teaching).

It’s so important to ensure refugee children can continue their education. A school provides children with the chance to socialise with their peers, to communicate daily with them and be involved in various school and after-school events and activities. All of this contributes to a child’s community inclusion, social cohesion, and their mental health. It is difficult for an adult to resist the isolation and consequences of becoming a refugee, and even so more for a child.  Being able to access education is one way to address this.

Our work to help refugee children get into community schools and pre-schools aims not only to ensure the respect of their right to education, but also to keep them together with their parents – in the same house, in the same community. To prevent their unnecessary separation as we know that children belong in families.

Find out more about the work of Lumos Moldova.