The United Nations’ regional advocate of children’s rights, Marie-Pierre Poirier, visited Ukraine in mid-March to survey how Russia’s war is affecting children, 140,000 of whom have been uprooted from their homes. On March 13, she spoke with the Kyiv Post following a one-day visit to the war zone in eastern Ukraine.
“It is a challenge (for Ukraine), but it is also an opportunity,” the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) director for central and eastern Europe said.
Poirier had visited Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in government-controlled Donetsk Oblast. Government troops re-took the cities last summer from Moscow-backed separatists who had occupied them in April. There, she witnessed the flow of refugees from areas occupied by Russian forces and their local allies.
She was particularly impressed seeing a train carriage with sleeping compartments where displaced families lived in Sloviansk. In one of the meetings with locals, a man told Poirier that the village from which he fled hadn’t had water supply for 70 days.
Such personal stories, according to Poirier, are an important context that differs from the media reports on the war.
In response to the escalating humanitarian crisis in the war-torn easternmost oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk, UNICEF has increased its in-country staff from 25 to 60 employees in 2014. Most of the new employees are based in three new offices in Ukraine’s east close to the front line.
One aspect of their job is to teach local school psychologists techniques on how to help children overcome war trauma.
UNICEF estimates that 63 children were killed since the war started in mid-April, displacing an additional 140,000. Official Ukrainian government statistics count 65 killed, and 127 wounded. Both sides believe their tallies to be conservatively low.
Amid the humanitarian crisis Poirier sees an opportunity for reforms. The government has noticed long ignored problems that children and families face. One of them is the importance of family over institutions in rearing a child. Previously, Poirier says, priority was given to the state in placing children from disadvantaged families in state-run institutions.
The priority has shifted now, said Poirier, based on her meetings with officials in Kyiv, including First Lady Maryna Poroshenko.The tragedy of the children being separated from their families over the war has stressed the importance of families being together.
Although satisfied with the authority’s overall efforts to help those affected by the crisis, Poirier said the government should come up with a clear registration system for internally displaced people.
As of early February, there were 980,000 officially registered internally displaced people. At the same time, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that unofficial estimation is twice as high.
Poirier, who witnessed other conflicts in Europe and Africa, was very impressed with how strong the response of civil society was to the crisis.
She was especially impressed by the efforts of volunteers.
“This is not known,” she said. “This part of the world is known to leave it all to the government, to expect it to sort out the problems. But in this case you can see the strength of civil society.”
