The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) published this March 30, a note in which it reported that Ukraine is at emergency level 3, the highest available to this institution. More than 4 million people have already fled Ukraine to neighboring countries since the Russian invasion began on February 24. Poland continues to be the priority destination for refugees, with 2.3 million people arriving in the last month.
In the already confirmed largest exodus of people in Europe since the Second World War, more than 4 million people have left Ukraine for neighboring countries fleeing the war that affects the country’s main cities on the ground.
35 days of conflict were enough to confirm the most pessimistic forecasts made by UNHCR at the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24. At the moment, almost one in ten Ukrainians has left the country.
Most of those who have fled due to the war are women, children and older adults who were forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries, while men under 60 years of age, forced by the Ukrainian government, stayed on the ground to carry out defensive tasks against attacks by Russian troops.
In addition, UNHCR reported that there are more than 6.5 million internally displaced persons in the country, bringing the total number to about 11 million demobilized people.
According to UNICEF, about half of all refugees who have left Ukraine to date are minors.
In their search for refuge outside the Ukrainian borders, Poland remains the preferred destination for the majority. According to data reported at border checkpoints and collected by the United Nations institution, the country is currently hosting approximately 2.3 million Ukrainians.
Among the data recorded by UNHCR, Russia has also been a destination of arrival for more than 350,000 Ukrainians, as well as Belarus, which, although in a much smaller number, would have welcomed more than 10,000 people in the last month.
Refugees who have left the country in the last month face physical and psychological problems. According to Ángeles Plaza, a psychologist from the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid “they arrive with what they are wearing and in a state of ‘shock’, and it is that they not only leave behind their houses and material properties, but also their dreams, their illusions, their projects, your family, your friends…”.
They also “feel powerless and in pain and will have to go through a whole grieving process, and they will need help and family and social support networks,” adds the psychologist.
Regarding the displaced in Russia, Eugenia Filipenko, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, denounced this March 30 before the Human Rights Council that nearly 40,000 Ukrainians had been forcibly transferred from Mariúpol, a city in the south of the country that has besieged for two weeks by Russian troops, to Russian territory or controlled by that country.
James Elder, spokesman for UNICEF, communicated to the EFE Agency his concern about the possible forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russian territory.
“We have not been able to independently verify this information, but it is incredibly worrying,” he denounced in the face of what, if true, would be one of the greatest violations against children, a practice prohibited by international humanitarian law.
The war blew up an already difficult situation
Before the outbreak of the conflict on February 24, Ukraine was no longer going through an easy humanitarian situation.
As a consequence of the hostilities during the Euromaidan Revolution between November 2013 and February 2014; After the illegitimate annexation of Crimea by Russia on February 20, 2014 and with the conflict in Donbass, which left more than 13,000 dead from 2014 to the beginning of 2022, the situation in the European country has already deteriorated in recent years.
UNHCR reported that by the end of 2021, approximately 3 million people in Ukraine required humanitarian aid and that there were more than 850,000 refugees from the conflict in the east of the country.
However, the Russian invasion blew up all these statistics in record time, since the number of people displaced internally and abroad caused this to become the largest crisis of exiles in the old continent since the Second World War, which aroused a wave of European solidarity, also from the institutions, which have implemented extraordinary programs for the massive number of refugees who have arrived on Community soil in recent weeks.
The European Union, now in solidarity
The European Union’s response to the war in Ukraine was not only swift in the implementation of sanctions against Russia or in the shipment of defensive material to the Ukrainian troops, but also in the application of an open border program to welcome the millions of refugees already left by the conflict in its first month.
The European Commission presented a proposal at the end of February to activate the application of a directive to grant immediate international protection to Ukrainian refugees.
This extraordinary measure was unanimously accepted by the European Council on March 3, becoming the first time since the creation of this mechanism in 2001 that it was going to be activated.
In this way, Ukrainian refugees do not need to submit asylum applications and are guaranteed protection for the first year, although it can be extended. In this way, inclusion in their new destinations is facilitated.
However, the EU’s supportive response to Ukrainian refugees contrasts with the institution’s position towards other migrants and refugees who have fled other conflicts in recent years, such as Syrian, Afghan or sub-Saharan refugees, affected by wars and other contingencies and that have not received such a favorable response from the institution.
Hungary, a European partner that is hosting around 370,000 refugees at the moment, has not applied the same favored treatment to other non-Ukrainian asylum seekers.
In fact, at the end of 2021 the country was sanctioned by the Court of Justice of the European Union for an infringement of Community law by approving a law that punished even prison terms for people who offered help to immigrants in an irregular situation.
Similarly, the European Union was also at the center of the controversy during the Syrian refugee crisis, when it agreed with Turkey on a solution to stop the massive arrival of refugees due to the civil conflict in that country.
However, the current conflict at the gates of the Union’s soil has brought out institutional solidarity, as well as the response of civil society, which has mobilized to transfer tons of humanitarian aid to border points and alleviate the needs of the millions of people who do not know when they will be able to return to their homes.
With information from EFE, AP and foreign media
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