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Regional Assessment Report / Ukraine Crisis Response - Waiting for the Sky to Close: The Unprecedented Crisis Facing Women and Girls Fleeing Ukraine

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Executive Summary

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a staggering 12.8 million people have been displaced. Over 5 million have fled the country, and almost 8 million are internally displaced inside the borders of Ukraine. This is the region’s largest displacement crisis since World War II.

In every armed conflict, men’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) increases rapidly and stays elevated long after the fighting stops. As the war in Ukraine rages on, the region faces an unprecedented crisis of displaced women and children. Like all wars, this one is being fought on the bodies of these women and girls. Conflictrelated sexual violence has been documented in the form of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women, and women’s organizations inside Ukraine report that domestic violence is on the rise as well. Alongside an increasing push for the documentation of war crimes is the need to make sure all survivors of war crimes, domestic violence, and other forms of violence against women and girls get the medical and psychosocial support they need. Gender-sensitive violence prevention measures are urgently needed, but they are trailing behind the response. The strategic erasure of women’s rights over time in Eastern Europe created a crisis for women and girls long before the war started, and is now exacerbating the risks they face during the war.

An indomitable network of women’s rights organizations (WROs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) exists throughout the region. Struggling to maintain advances in gender equality against increasingly overt attacks on women’s rights, these organizations have long been responding to the needs of women and girls. The war has seen these organizations spring into action to support internally and forcibly displaced persons (FDPs), once again woefully underfunded.

Because of their deep expertise and experience, these organizations and groups are bestpositioned to build the solutions girls and women urgently need. This has put immense pressure on many WROs who are concerned about their capacity to continue supporting their primary caseload —women and vulnerable populations from their own country— in addition to those displaced by the war.

Local non-government organizations (NGOs) and WROs need sustained, flexible, and long-term funding to increase their capacity and continue working in the region. Instead, a top-down, unequal relationship between capable local actors and international humanitarian agencies is developing, despite standards such as the World Humanitarian Summit’s Grand Bargain and its commitments to ‘localization,’ the Core Commitments to Women and Girls, and the IASC GBV Guidelines. This inequitable approach alienates WROs from humanitarian coordination structures and ultimately fails women and girls, who are not consulted in the design of the aid that is being developed.

As part of a partnership with HIAS, VOICE conducted a four-week rapid assessment of Ukraine and five bordering countries (Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) to assess the needs of women and girls affected by the war in Ukraine and the needs of WROs and groups responding to the emergency.

This assessment was conducted from March 25 through April 15, 2022. During the assessment the VOICE Team held 171 key informant interviews including 33 WROs and CSOs inside Ukraine, 22 focus group discussions with over 167 women FDPs, and over 55 site observations at formal, informal and private shelters, train and bus stations, 72-hour transit camps, border crossings and organizational service points.

A critical piece of the assessment validation process, was the review and validation of the findings and recommendations by regional and country-based WROs, CSOs, UN personnel and coordination working group members.

The assessment revealed high risks of trafficking and sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), as well as conflict-related sexual violence, domestic violence, and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV). It revealed further protection concerns related to shelter and unsustainable housing (often heightening the risk of exploitive labor); a lack of access to livelihoods and cashbased assistance; and inconsistent access to reliable information. Overall, displaced persons throughout the region lack access to GBV services, reproductive healthcare, and psychosocial support services, and Roma and LGBTQIA+ communities face additional discrimination and protection concerns.

In order for any humanitarian interventions to be effective, they must center the needs of women and girls and the security risks they face. Detailed recommendations for region-wide action are provided at the end of this report. Top priorities include the following:

  • Ensure a gender-sensitive humanitarian response by supporting women’s movements across the region. A commitment to sustaining the gains for women and girls made in previous decades must underpin all programming for internally displaced persons in Ukraine and FDPs in all border countries, with robust challenges to the inevitable patriarchal backlash.

  • Fulfill commitments to localization by shifting power to women-led organizations. The localization agenda is focused on increasing local actors’ access to international humanitarian funding, partnerships, coordination spaces, and capacity building.3 Localization is one key to upholding the rights of women and girls in emergencies, as local women’s responses are often more relevant and effective than external ones.

  • Address gaps in the protection of women and children. Given the unparalleled levels of funding that have gone into this response, along with the high level of humanitarian access to the border countries, it is paramount that essential life-saving protection interventions—detailed further in the report—are prioritized and strengthened.

  • Improve access to essential services. As lack of access to essential and life-saving services is directly correlated with safety and security risks, all actors must take action to meet reception and integration needs for FDPs—including needs for healthcare, psychosocial support, safe accommodation, cash and voucher assistance, livelihoods support, and education.