KIND is dedicated to protecting unaccompanied and separated children (UASCs) worldwide. In line with our mission, we are proud to mark two years of advancing protection, support, and access to justice for children displaced from Ukraine through the initiative, Project Suzir’ya.
Suzir’ya, which means “Constellation” in Ukrainian, has evolved from laying the groundwork of fostering connections and delivering a state-of-the-art national capacity building curriculum to help stakeholders better protect children displaced from Ukraine, including unaccompanied and separated children— into a new phase enhancing the project’s reach and impact. We’ve trained more than 2,500 individuals, including social workers, lawyers, law enforcement representatives, prosecutors, psychologists, public authorities, teachers, and other actors who work with vulnerable children.
Through the Suzir’ya hubs in Poland, Slovakia, Czechia and Romania, KIND and its partners have provided over 539 children and young people displaced from Ukraine with direct legal and psychosocial support and offered technical assistance and capacity building support to government and other actors involved in protecting children at the national and regional levels.
We broadened our network of partners and stakeholders from Ukraine and worked to advance systemic change that creates a better safety net for children displaced from Ukraine who are unaccompanied or have been separated from their parents, family members, or legal guardians.
Building Partnerships to Protect and Empower Children and Young People Across Europe
Through Suzir’ya, KIND engages with diverse local, regional, and national stakeholders to not only effect change on the individual level but more broadly, to build the capacity of national and regional systems charged with safeguarding children and young people displaced by the war.. One key way we do this is through the Regional Child Protection Advisory Group which brings together child protection actors from different countries to share experiences, highlight challenges and exchange on solutions.
Our outreach and collaboration efforts have resulted in strengthening partnerships with civil society organizations, for example by providing training to key civil society organisations , on protecting children. Last year for instance KIND collaborated with Save the Children Poland to disseminate KIND’s child friendly “Know Your Rights” guides in schools and libraries across Poland attended by children and youth displaced from Ukraine.
Sharing Knowledge and Building Cross Border Networks with Suzir’ya
Over the past two years, KIND has organized expert training sessions such as our Regional Workshop in Poland in November 2025 which brought together over 40 partners and stakeholders engaged in the protection of children displaced from Ukraine to share their national and regional expertise in transnational child protection cases, and exchange on lessons learned.
In Brussels, Suzir’ya helped convene partners and allies to bridge local practice with European policymaking through a “network of networks” meeting held in December 2025. Co-hosted with Missing Children Europe, and with the support of our Regional Child Protection Advisory Group member Child Circle, the event brought together 19 regional network organisations who together convene a membership of 435 organisations across EU member states. The organizations present during the event came from intersecting fields and discussed emerging cross-border risks facing children displaced from Ukraine and ways to strengthen collective responses.
KIND is also proud to have organized an online expert debrief series for our partners across Ukraine and Europe. By bringing together Ukrainian civil society actors and European partners, the online expert debrief series created space for shared learning, peer exchange, and capacity-building grounded in the lived realities of children from Ukraine.
The series was designed to respond directly to the challenges faced by professionals working with children displaced from Ukraine by providing practical, trauma-informed and child-friendly approaches to better protect at-risk children.
In addition to hosting these efforts, KIND built connections and collaborated with key individuals and groups working to safeguard children at multiple high-level and multi-stakeholders events. In December 2025, KIND’s Child Protection Specialist for Europe gave a presentation on child-friendly justice at the 8th Plenary Meeting of the Consultation Group on the Children of Ukraine at the Council of Europe. During the presentation, KIND highlighted the need to ensure children have access to child-friendly justice and specialized psychosocial support, which includes ensuring that professionals work collaboratively across disciplines and have access to specialized training.
Looking Ahead
As Project Suzir’ya moves towards its third year, our scope is expanding. KIND has turned our attention not only to how individual national systems can provide protection, but to how they can work together across borders. Unaccompanied and separated children and young people on the move , whether fleeing renewed hostilities, seeking family reunification, or moving between host countries, must be guaranteed continuity of care and protection throughout their journeys.
Building on the foundations laid in the project’s first two years, our next phase will strengthen cross-border coordination between child protection and justice actors across Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia, in particular given the rapidly changing context for children from Ukraine. Political attention is shifting, public discourse is hardening, and resources are contracting across the region. At the same time, the legal and policy framework that has underpinned protection in the European Union is approaching a critical juncture: the EU Temporary Protection Directive is set to expire in 2027, leaving the future status of millions of Ukrainians uncertain. This makes it more important than ever that we work cross-border and interagency, to ensure that children from Ukraine continue to receive the care and support that is their right, no matter where in Europe they are.
