Ministers and international delegates gather at the Ministerial Conference on the Human Dimension of Ukraine’s Peace Formula in Montréal in October 2024. The meeting established a roadmap for returning prisoners of war, detained civilians and deported children — a process Canada, Ukraine and Norway will revisit at the Toronto conference in September 2026. FILE PHOTO.
Media Access Opens as September Meeting Shifts Focus From Building a Roadmap to Tracing, Returns and Life After Captivity
By Shahnoor Saqib | SCN NEWS
OTTAWA, Aug. 24, 2026 (SCN NEWS) — Canada has opened international media accreditation for a major Ukraine humanitarian conference in Toronto next month, setting the stage for a meeting that could be substantially different from the Montréal gathering that launched the process nearly two years ago. The Sept. 28–29 conference, co-organized by Canada, Ukraine and Norway, will again deal with Ukrainian children taken from their homes, unlawfully detained civilians and prisoners of war, but this time governments will arrive with an existing international roadmap, operational experience and a record that can be measured. The central question is no longer simply what countries are prepared to promise, but what the diplomatic machinery created since Montréal has actually delivered — and what still prevents thousands of people from returning home.
That distinction separates Toronto from Canada's first ministerial conference in Montréal in October 2024. The earlier meeting brought together representatives of more than 70 countries and international organizations at a stage when governments were still trying to establish common mechanisms for the human dimension of the war. Its major outcome was the Montreal Pledge, a roadmap covering prisoners of war, unlawfully detained civilians and deported or forcibly transferred children, including information-sharing, intermediary states, return mechanisms and rehabilitation. Qatar, South Africa and the Holy See were among those offering intermediary roles, making Montréal primarily a conference about designing an international response to a problem for which no single government possessed either the information or access required to solve it.
Toronto comes after almost two years in which that framework has been tested. Canada and Ukraine have expanded the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, carried the issue into G7 diplomacy and the United Nations, coordinated sanctions and invested in tracing and reintegration. Canadian government records also show Ottawa backing projects ranging from UNICEF-supported child protection to AI-driven open-source intelligence intended to help locate children whose whereabouts cannot readily be established through official channels. That means ministers arriving in Toronto will have something Montréal largely did not: evidence about which approaches have worked, where cooperation has stalled and where governments remain dependent on intermediaries or Russian participation.
The conference's main agenda is consequently expected to revolve around three connected groups — deported or forcibly transferred Ukrainian children, unlawfully detained civilians and prisoners of war — but with emphasis on return, rehabilitation and reintegration rather than simply securing another declaration of support. Global Affairs Canada says Toronto will take stock of progress under the Montreal Pledge, strengthen coordination among participating governments and identify practical next steps. The Brussels high-level meeting in May had already sharpened that operational agenda around tracing and data verification, organized returns, diplomacy, rehabilitation and reintegration, accountability and coordinated sanctions.
That makes tracing one of the issues worth watching most closely. Governments cannot negotiate the return of a child or civilian they cannot reliably locate, and the war has produced disputes over identity, documentation, guardianship and legal status alongside the larger political argument over how people were transferred. Canada has funded efforts aimed at identifying, tracing and verifying cases, while also supporting a centralized information-management system. Toronto could therefore become an opportunity to determine whether separate databases, governments, humanitarian organizations, technology providers and intermediary states can be connected into a more effective system rather than continuing to work through fragmented channels.
A second difference is that Toronto will have to deal more seriously with what happens after someone comes home. A successful return does not end a case: children may need family reunification and psychological support, former detainees can require medical treatment and rehabilitation, and prisoners of war may return after prolonged captivity. Canada's official description specifically puts rehabilitation and reintegration alongside return, suggesting that the conference will look beyond headline numbers toward whether governments have built sufficient support for people after release. That gives Toronto a potentially broader humanitarian purpose than a meeting measured only by the number of negotiated transfers.
The third test is political. The Montréal conference was held when Canada's immediate task was assembling an international coalition around Ukraine's Peace Formula. Toronto arrives while humanitarian returns are increasingly being discussed as part of the credibility of any wider peace process. Canadian policy documents describe the return of prisoners, detained civilians and deported children as both a humanitarian priority and a potentially important confidence-building measure. That raises the stakes: if negotiations over the war advance, Canada and its partners will have to ensure that territory, ceasefire arrangements and security guarantees do not push unresolved human cases to the margins.
Russia has rejected accusations that it systematically abducted Ukrainian children and has disputed Ukraine's and Western governments' characterization of wartime transfers. That continuing disagreement exposes the fundamental limitation Toronto cannot eliminate. Canada can improve tracing, coordinate sanctions, fund rehabilitation, recruit intermediary states and build international pressure, but many returns ultimately require access and cooperation from authorities controlling the people or territory involved. The conference's value will therefore depend partly on whether it produces mechanisms capable of working through that political barrier rather than merely restating positions already established in Montréal.
The opening of media accreditation adds public scrutiny to that test. Global Affairs Canada says bona fide journalists from print, television, radio, news agencies and online media organizations can apply, including international journalists on assignment. Applicants must submit the required documentation by midnight Eastern Time on Sept. 11, and accreditation does not automatically guarantee access to every conference event.
Toronto therefore starts with a different question from Montréal. In 2024, ministers needed to decide how the international community should organize itself to bring people home. In September 2026, they will have to explain what that organization has accomplished, where it has failed and what changes could make returns faster and more systematic. Montréal produced the roadmap. Toronto will increasingly be judged on whether that roadmap leads somewhere.