Speaking from Kyiv, Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, Osnat Lubranidescribes the heartbreak she feels after witnessing “this destruction, this suffering,” in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Bucha, Irpin and more.
The UN and hundreds of national partners and volunteers have gone to great lengths to help those most in need, but the Russian and Ukrainian authorities can do much more to protect civilians, she stressed.
Lack of water, food, health and shelter
“Nearly 16 million people in Ukraine today need humanitarian assistance; water, food, medical services, a roof over their heads, protection. These are conservative numbers that the United Nations is currently in the process of revising.”
Outside the war-torn country, amid growing alarm about global food insecurity in part due to lack of safe access to Ukrainian ports and the grain cellars they hold, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) repeats its calls to reach them.
Export efforts fell
“Without the Black Sea ports, we would not be able to achieve the level of exports that Ukraine urgently needs,” said Kate Newton, Deputy Emergency Coordinator of WFP Ukraine.
“However, we are doing everything we can, i.e. road, rail and now river, to try to get close to maximum production. And right now, we think it’s about a million tons a month and maybe we can push it up to two million, but We urgently need access to the Black Sea. “
Since the Russian invasion on February 24, the United Nations has tracked the number of civilians killed and wounded across Ukraine as a result of the conflict. The process is exhaustive, meaning the actual number of victims is almost certainly much higher.
Thousands of civilian targets
“Our number with nearly 5,000 civilians killed and more than 5,000 injured is only a small fraction of the terrifying reality,” said Ms. Lubrani, who also emphasized the infrastructure’s broad aim. civilian layer in artillery exchanges.
“I can’t say the exact number of hospitals, schools and homes that were damaged, but we know that number is in the thousands, we simply cannot verify the exact number. .”
More than 300 organizations are carrying out humanitarian response activities In Ukraine, almost 200 of them are national NGOs related to Ukrainians “who are the first responders… they really support each other,” Ms. Lubrani said.
Aid limit
Since February 24, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners have provided life-saving assistance to nearly nine million people in every region of Ukraine, the top UN aid official there continues to say. added that nearly two million people received cash assistance to “make their own choices to meet their basic needs”.
Despite these successes, Access to aid is still too dangerous in many places.
“We were unable to deliver relief or reach Kherson,” Ms. Lubrani said. We are unable to provide relief or reach Mariupol. We could not provide assistance of any kind, did not even manage to get the parties to agree on safe passageways to evacuate people from Sievierodonetsk, so that they could move in the direction they chose. “
© UNICEF / Juan Haro
A family fleeing conflict in Mariupol arrives at the Liviv train station in Ukraine.
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine stressed that this scenario “is not new to the mother of a four-month-old baby I met while assisting in the evacuation of the Mariupol and Azovstal factories there. , who told me what she was like. Survive for months without seeing sunlightHow she struggled to feed herself, and how she and others had to live without enough clean water to drink. “
And Ms. Lubrani continued that it is also “not new to people in almost the entire Luhanska region, not just Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, where we have seen images of devastation caused by clashes between the parties in the conflict. this horror”.
Concern about ‘filtration’ in Mariupol
When asked about the situation in the port city of Mariupol, the Head of the Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, said that the United Nations is continuing to try to ensure the access of Russian forces there.
There are also ongoing concerns about the so-called filtering of people who want to leave the devastated city.
“We understand that if people don’t completely pass that filtering, they can be detained and detained, sometimes in areas of Donetsk, and we fear for their safety,” Ms. Bogner said. surname. “We have previously documented that people held in detention camps in areas controlled by the armed forces – armed forces linked to Russia in the east – were tortured and subjected to torture. mistreatment and We are very concerned that this may continue. “
