COMPETENCE OF STATE AUTHORITIES IN RELATION TO CHILDREN DURING MARTIAL LAW

Introduction. The full-scale armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has had severe consequences for the entire Ukrainian society and state. Since February 2022, according to the Office of the Prosecutor General, more than 550 children have been killed and more than 1,914 injured as a result of the aggressor state's actions. The abduction of Ukrainian children, the forced granting of Russian citizenship and forced adoption have become a common practice of the Russian occupiers. Today, the attention of the entire progressive international community is focused on the problem of protecting the rights of children in Ukraine, and many efforts are being made by Ukrainian government agencies, international partners and human rights organizations to protect them, return them to their homeland and reunite them with their families. This makes the problem of improving the legal status of Ukrainian state authorities in terms of protecting the rights and interests of children acutely relevant and confirms the importance of the topic of this article. Purpose. The purpose of the article is to determine the peculiarities of the competence of public authorities with regard to children during martial law. Materials and Methods. The research materials are: 1) theoretical works in the field of constitutional, administrative and military law which define the peculiarities of the functioning of the public authority system in Ukraine; 2) the Constitution and laws of Ukraine, and by-laws regulating the protection of children's rights and interests. In the course of the study, the author used the systemic-structural and comparative legal methods, which made it possible to establish the levels at which public authorities of Ukraine exercise their functions to protect the rights and interests of children during the legal regime of martial law. Results. It is concluded that currently in Ukraine there are actively functioning institutions of the State responsible for the protection of children both in peacetime and in wartime, including the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and the Advisor-Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation. The competence of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights is regulated by the Law of Ukraine «On the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights». However, there is currently no legal act that would regulate the issues and scope of activities of the Advisor to the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, which in practice can lead to duplication and inconsistency of actions with other state institutions in the field of child protection during armed conflicts.