MOSCOW, May 23 (RAPSI) - Russia’s human rights ombudsman Tatiana Moskalkova has spoken in support of the use of baby boxes, or incubators for parents who want to leave their newborn babies anonymously.

Baby boxes give children a chance to survive and be adopted in future, Moskalkova told journalists on Tuesday.

According to the Commissioner for Human Rights, all measures, which can save life and minimize harm caused to a child by parents’ abandonment, have a right to exist.

Special incubators for leaving newborn children have been set up in several Russian regions. Since 2012, baby boxes have come into use at hospitals and religious organizations in the Krasnodar, Perm, Kamchatka, and Stavropol Territories as well as in the Kaliningrad, Kursk, Leningrad, Moscow, Pskov and Sverdlovsk Regions.

However, there is no legal regulation of using baby boxes. Safety requirements and operating procedure have not been fixed for such equipment in current legislation, the bill’s authors stated.

In March, a group of lawmakers submitted to the State Duma a bill that would authorize Russian regions to make autonomous decisions concerning the use of baby boxes. The State Duma Committee on Federal and Local Government supported the bill in April.

The draft law would entitle Russia’s territorial entities to establish by themselves if it is necessary to organize incubators for anonymous leaving babies taking into account cultural and other vernacular traditions. Regional authorities would be able to fix the number of baby boxes, their location and installation order, an explanatory note to the bill reads.

Under the bill, if a region’s authorities do not think it proper to use baby boxes, they may not adopt the relevant legislation. Therefore, incubators for leaving newborn children would not be set up in that region.