Dear Colleagues
As the war enters its second month in Ukraine, almost 10 million people in the country have been displaced. With over 6 million internally displaced persons and more than 3 million who have crossed international borders into other countries – making it the largest refugee crisis Europe has seen since the second World War.
IPPF’s MA in Ukraine, Women’s Health and Family Planning Ukraine, is a small M.A. of six staff, whose main area of work has focused on advocacy and engagement on reproductive health policy development, comprehensive sexuality education, youth engagement, sexual and gender-based violence training for medical professionals, public awareness campaigns on cancer prevention among women and rehabilitation programs for breast cancer survivors. As of now, staff and volunteers of the M.A. are safe, and most have moved out of Kyiv to the West of Ukraine. The Executive Director is working closely with us, providing information on what supplies are needed most urgently and where, and as I write, she is working with us to start developing a longer term programme in Ukraine, supporting the response to GBV and the clinical management of rape in key regions of need.
Given IPPF EN’s deep engagement with members and partners across Europe, we have quickly been able to connect with Member Associations and collaborative partners on the ground in Ukraine and the surrounding countries of Hungary, Poland, Romania, Moldova and Slovakia. We are be providing services through organizations including Polish Women’s Strike, Budapest Pride, Abortion Support Network, Emma Association, NANE Association and and Patent – a Hungarian NGO focused on women’s rights. Read more about our partners here. We have a programme proposal ready to go in Romania, a cooperation between our MA and two other partners, as well as potential to do more in Moldova, and are working with the resmob team to raise funds to support this, as well as future work within Ukraine.
Our work on Ukraine has five elements:
1. Linking those in Ukraine and fleeing the conflict with life-saving sexual and reproductive healthcare, including contraception and emergency contraception, STI and HIV treatment, safe-abortion and post-abortion care services and obstetric and delivery kits for women giving birth. Our kits have now arrived in Ukraine and are being delivered to two hospitals in Donetsk and Odessa.
2. Working with partners on the ground to ensure adequate provisions for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence including medical support via post-rape care kits for clinicians and psychosocial support for survivors.
3. Distributing dignity kits and menstrual hygiene items to refugees arriving at borders and cross-border into Ukraine.
4. As IPPF we also recognise that certain inequalities have been exacerbated by the war – especially the differential treatment of certain ethnic groups of refugees, including black, brown and Roma people, and LGBTQI people. We condemn this treatment and will be working to ensure that ALL refugees – regardless of race, colour, descent, national or ethnic origin or sexuality receive the same level of care, empathy, support and attention as white refugees and are guaranteed safe passage.
5. We also recognise that while the scale of the Ukraine humanitarian crisis is unprecedented in Europe, around the world, there are millions of people suffering the same fate. We are also aware that this crisis will vastly exacerbate already existing unmet SRHR needs for women and girls not only in Ukraine, but in the other countries IPPF is active in such as Ethiopia where the Tigray crisis continues unabated, Afghanistan and Gaza, Palestine. We are asking policymakers, organizations, and citizens to ensure equitable responses and long-term support for humanitarian crises, when and where needed.
There is a Global Communications Pack available for anyone who is interested in learning more about our work in Ukraine. We have also provided some useful documents below where you can get updates on Ukraine and other refugee crises IPPF is supporting.
Finally, we would like to leave you with a powerful quote from an activist supporting arriving refugees, sent to us by Marta Lempart, leader of the Polish Women’s Strike.
“There is less and less traffic at the Central Station, especially among non-Ukrainians, because most of them evacuated in the first days. The few people who showed up yesterday during my duty show the same thing all the time – discrimination and racism. “Diana, raised in a mostly Ukrainian family, almost all her life in Ukraine, with a permanent residence card, a law student (!) came with tears in her eyes. They denied her a free ticket to Berlin at the ticket office – ‘I am from Ukraine just like other refugees. I come from Somalia, but I lived in Ukraine all my life! And why didn’t they give me a ticket? Do you know why? Because I’m black!’. “I know, but I completely don’t know what to say then except that I am ashamed.” [sic] – Katarzyna Winiarska
Please reach out to me, Caroline Hickson, Regional Director for the European Network, if you have any further questions on Ukraine. If there are humanitarian crises in your region that you would like to focus on, please reach out to:
Karmen Ivey kivey@ippf.org,
Nerida Williams nwilliams@ippf.org or
Amina Khan at akhan@ippf.org
Useful documents and updates
United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) - Ukraine emergency
Félicitations pour tout ce que l IIPF est entrain de fournir,il n’y a pas de plus humiliant et inhumain pendant ces jours que de faire la guerre,l ATSR reste toujours à votre disposition pour toute action humanitaire.esperant que la paix régnera de nouveaux et que tout réfugiés rentre dans son pays sainte sauf,.cordialement