OPEN LETTER: Minister Anand, in Toronto, count the children brought home, not the signatories

Five first days of school

Toronto, this Monday

Minister, this Monday, September 28, you open a conference in Toronto that will be judged on a single number: the children who came home.

This month, all across the country, children went back to school. The backpack too new. The straps that dig into the shoulder. The bell on the first morning.

A Ukrainian child taken in the spring of 2022 has just started a fifth school year far from home.

A child does not count in years of war. A child counts in school years.

A school year is a year. A year of notebooks. A year of friends. A year of a language settling in.

Two days, three countries

Canada is hosting, with Ukraine and Norway, the second international conference on the return of Ukrainian children, detained civilians and prisoners of war. Two days, September 28 and 29.

This morning, The Canadian Press announced European ministers, non-governmental organizations, and Ukrainians back from captivity who are to be heard there.

Rooms. Microphones. Flags on the tables.

Not the number of delegations. Not the number of speeches. The number of children sleeping at home tonight.

No child is measured in conferences.

The tide does not wait

New York, September 26

On Saturday, from the podium of the UN General Assembly, you spoke of the Nova Scotia of your childhood.

There, you said, everyone knows one thing: “the tide does not wait.” You have to move with it.

Then you spoke of a commitment. Canada, you said, is working toward the “unconditional return of all Ukrainian children,” of detained civilians and of prisoners of war.

Then you announced Toronto, for the following week, on this “urgent issue.”

Unconditional, you say

The same speech promised the Black Sea and named Iran. I am writing to you about one of your sentences only.

Unconditional. Urgent. Two words that bind the person who speaks them.

From the same podium, you said that “Canada is a reliable partner.” Reliability is something you prove. With dates. With numbers.

A tide is read on a gauge painted against the wharf. You see how far the water rose. You note it, to the centimetre.

I take your words seriously. That is why I am writing. Urgency without a gauge remains an emotion.

Your urgency deserves the same gauge.

A tide gets measured. So does a return.

2,573 children home

The September 12 release

On September 12, your department published the Toronto announcement. It carries your own numbers.

20,651 possible cases of deportation or forced transfer, confirmed by Ukrainian authorities. 2,573 children returned to Ukraine.

The list of 339 names handed over in Istanbul already has its own file. Here I am speaking of everything else.

Do the division. A little more than one child in eight.

One in eight. After four and a half years. In a coalition Canada co-chairs.

One in eight

Between your two numbers, a gap of 18,078.

The two numbers do not count exactly the same thing, I know. The second includes children brought out of occupation. The order of magnitude holds.

And Kyiv considers the first number low. Ukraine’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, speaks of up to 150,000 children, according to the Kyiv Independent. The presidential commissioner for children’s rights puts it at 200,000 to 300,000.

These are Kyiv’s estimates. I give them as such.

The Globe and Mail, for its part, reports that about 1.6 million children live under occupation.

Eight files for every return, after four and a half years.

Eighty-seven through Qatar

The July report

Today, The Globe and Mail published a long account of these returns, from Kyiv. In it sits the number that should open your conference.

More than 2,600 children returned by the September count of Bring Kids Back UA, the Ukrainian presidency’s initiative.

How many came through the channels opened in Montreal? That number I have found published nowhere.

In July, a report by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights named Qatar the most operationally important diplomatic actor. According to that report, Qatar facilitated the return of 87 children.

Eighty-seven.

A corridor, and hands

The Ukrainian organization Save Ukraine, for its part, has helped about 1,763 of them come home, the Globe writes.

Qatar, 87 children. Save Ukraine, about 1,763.

I stand with those who bring the children back one by one. Against the rule Moscow has set in their way since early 2026. And against any Toronto closing that counts signatories rather than returns.

Because by the September 2026 count, one NGO has helped twenty times more children come home than the best state mediator.

This is no reproach to Qatar. It is an address. Returns have a path. That path has faces.

Most come home through a humanitarian corridor between Ukraine and Belarus, the Globe specifies.

Children come home through hands, not signatures.

The biometric rule

Since early 2026

On the other side, there is a decision. It needs no missile.

Since the start of 2026, Russian authorities have required minors to hold biometric documents to leave the occupied territories, the Kyiv Independent reported on September 4.

A child under 14 without a passport must obtain a Russian passport for foreign travel. Before, a birth certificate was enough.

Biometric. A photo. Fingerprints. For an eight-year-old who only wants to go home.

The file does not name who signed the rule. It gives its effect.

A passport to leave

Russia is increasingly obstructing the departure of minors, sums up Oleksandra Dvoretska, policy lead at Bring Kids Back UA.

In other words, the way out runs first through a Russian document. Yet the Montreal communiqué of November 2024 demanded an end to any change in the personal status of Ukrainian children.

Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, have been targeted since March 2023 by International Criminal Court warrants for the deportation of children. They remain accused.

And yet in August, 103 children and young people returned from the occupied territories, compared with 50 in July. More returns. Not easier ones, says Dvoretska.

To leave, a child must first carry a Russian paper.

May 11, in Brussels

Taking stock

On May 11, in Brussels, you closed the high-level meeting of the coalition for the return of Ukrainian children.

Your closing statement invited your colleagues to Toronto. It promised they would take stock there of progress on the Montreal commitment.

Take stock. Not a new commitment. Stock of the old one.

A stocktaking can be read. It fits on one page. It carries numbers.

The same statement welcomed five new members to the coalition, among them Cyprus, Monaco, Panama and Switzerland. It counted members.

Montreal, November 2024

That commitment dates from the fall of 2024, under your predecessor. The joint communiqué of November 1, 2024, carries more than fifty signatures from states and organizations.

It asked that the location and status of the children be made public. It asked that the International Committee of the Red Cross be allowed to see detainees. It asked that illegal adoptions stop.

It also pledged support for the rehabilitation of returned children. And communication campaigns to keep the issue before the world’s eyes. On that last point, no one can say Montreal failed.

On September 12, your department wrote that the task now was to “turn political commitments into tangible outcomes.”

Nearly two years after Montreal, the verb is still in the future tense.

Without a count, a commitment becomes a ceremony.

Fifty-one members

Kyiv, February 2, 2024

I now owe you the fact that troubles my letter. I publish it anyway.

Ottawa has done its share of the visible work. I say so plainly.

Canada did not look away. With Ukraine, in Kyiv, on February 2, 2024, it launched the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children. The coalition now has 51 members.

In May, your department said it had sanctioned more than 100 individuals and entities for these violations. It added $3.4 million for the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, and extended that support to the end of 2027. Eight more people were sanctioned on September 10.

What is moving

And returns are moving. About 2,100 children returned, another release from your department said on May 11. Then 2,573 on September 12.

Four months. About 470 more children.

The supporters the Globe cites, drawing on the OSCE: Qatar, the Vatican, an initiative by Melania Trump. Part of the movement does not go through Ottawa, and so much the better.

That is true. And yet at this pace, closing the gap of 18,078 would take more than twelve years.

Speeding up is not the same as arriving.

Camouflage nets in class

Kherson, an October morning in 2022

Now, the bodies. They are the ones who pay for every month of delay.

The Globe tells the story of Denys, an orphan from Kherson. He is 17 when a bus comes for the children of his orphanage, one morning in October 2022. Destination: a camp in occupied Crimea. They are promised two weeks.

At the camp, by his account, counsellors tell them: “No one needs you.”

Seventeen. A bus. Two weeks promised.

A boy told that, month after month…

Two weeks, they said. Denys came back to Ukraine in April 2026.

From school to the army

Alina was 15 when her village near Mariupol was occupied. Taken to Russia by her mother, she describes her school there to the Globe.

Every Monday, the Russian flag goes up in front of the school. Three times a week, the students weave camouflage nets for the troops. They are taught to load an automatic weapon.

A camouflage net is knotted by hand. One knot, then another, for hours.

That is the school year over there. A flag. A net. A weapon.

Denys, for his part, receives a conscription notice in Moscow, handed to him by his school’s principal. Three months to report.

Moscow wants to shorten the road from school to the army, Dvoretska tells the Kyiv Independent.

Over there, the school year leads to the recruiting office.

Confidential cases, public totals

More than 100 cases a day

You could answer me this, and the argument is serious.

Returns are negotiated out of sight. Save Ukraine works on more than 100 cases every day, the Globe writes, and the details stay confidential.

The Montreal commitment relied on trusted mediating states. A published number, a named rule, and a door could close.

It is the best answer to my letter. I take it whole.

Two totals already published

I am not asking you for a single name. I am not asking you for a single route. I am not asking you for a single intermediary.

I am asking you for totals. Your department already publishes them, on May 11, on September 12. Bring Kids Back UA publishes its own. The OSCE published Qatar’s 87.

And the biometric rule is no negotiating secret. A Kyiv newspaper described it on September 4.

A total betrays no one. It says neither where, nor how, nor through whom. It says how many.

Confidentiality protects a case. It does not protect a tally.

Silence protects a child, never an average.

1,878 civilians

June 2026

Toronto is not only about children. Your announcement says so.

In June 2026, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner had confirmed 1,878 civilians unlawfully detained by Russia. According to some civil society organizations, there could be as many as 20,000.

Kyiv does not publish the number of prisoners of war. In August, 9,529 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians had come back from Russian captivity.

A gap of more than ten to one

9,529 returns. No number across from it to say how many are still waiting.

Kyiv’s silence on its prisoners, I understand. A detained headcount remains war data.

And yet access is no secret. In 2024, Montreal demanded that the International Committee of the Red Cross be able to see these detainees.

How many visits since? Your September announcement does not say.

1,878 confirmed. Up to 20,000 estimated. More than ten times the gap.

Behind every gap, a phone kept near the bed. A ringer checked twice. A ring that does not come.

Between those two numbers, families wait for a call.

Six million dollars

September 10

On September 10, Canada announced up to $6 million to help Ukraine bring back and reintegrate its children.

Since the full-scale invasion, Ottawa has committed more than $26 billion in support of every kind, your September 12 announcement recalls.

Six million out of twenty-six billion. Less than 0.03%.

I know: those billions cover everything, from defence to reconstruction, and defence protects children too. The comparison is not an indictment. It is a scale.

All the way to the corridor

Where does the $6 million go? Your September 12 announcement does not say.

Six million is a line in a news release. It should be an address.

The Globe points out that UNICEF, which helps returned children, receives Canadian funds. Good. And those who get them out?

Bringing back a single child is colossal work, the Globe writes. It is paid for in train tickets, in rooms, in papers.

In Washington, an initiative by Melania Trump is among the supporters the OSCE notes. It is a good move by the Trump administration, and I call it that.

A dollar that never crosses the border brings no one home.

By tomorrow night

September 29

Minister, here are my demands. Each one has a date.

I ask you to close Toronto tomorrow, September 29, on a number: how many children have come home since Montreal.

I ask you to publish in the final declaration the stocktaking promised on May 11, commitment by commitment.

I ask you to name the Russian rule on biometric documents there, and to demand its withdrawal in writing.

December 31

By December 31, tell us where the $6 million of September 10 goes, and how many returns it pays for.

From that date on, publish a count every quarter: children returned, Red Cross visits obtained, civilians freed.

Five demands. Not one asks for another dollar.

Nothing impossible. Nothing secret. Only a habit to change: count what comes back, not what gets signed.

Two dates, five demands, one unit: the child.

Tomorrow night’s number

Toronto, September 29

Tomorrow night, the delegations will fly home. The badges will end up at the bottom of a jacket pocket. The rooms will empty.

A group photo will remain. It will not say how many.

I admit it: I have not followed the Montreal count either. Nearly two years went by without my asking for it. This letter is addressed to me too.

If nothing changes, next September will be the sixth school year away from home for the children taken in the spring of 2022.

The sixth first day

What will we demand of you tomorrow night if the Toronto declaration carries no child brought home?

For these children, the only back-to-school that counts is getting back home.

A tide is read against the wharf. A return is read in a house where someone finally pushes the door open.

Eighty-seven, 1,763: count the children, Minister.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Global Affairs Canada — Anita Anand’s address to the UN General Assembly, September 26, 2026
• Global Affairs Canada — Toronto conference announcement and return figures, September 12, 2026
• Global Affairs Canada — Brussels closing and Montreal stocktaking promised for Toronto, May 11, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Globe and Mail — children’s returns, Qatar and Save Ukraine, September 28, 2026
• Kyiv Independent — new Russian requirements for minors leaving occupied areas, September 4, 2026
• The Canadian Press (CityNews) — opening of the Toronto conference, September 28, 2026