Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, urges safety nets for those really in need – the elderly, the disabled and poorest.
Two and a half years of conflict have left more than two million Ukrainians displaced from their homes in other parts of the country or refugees in Russia. Ukraine is divided into non-government controlled areas in the East, the ATO/Donbass region, and the majority of the territory under government control.
Mayorsk is one of a handful of crossing points where people can now go back and forth. The queues at the crossing point are long and the weather is freezing. It is a slow and tortuous process but each day several thousand persons cross over there.
Filippo Grandi spoke to displaced people during his first trip to Ukraine as UNHCR, a post he assumed last January.
“One hour I’ve been standing here,” one man told him. “It will take me five hours in all just to cross over.” “It is the civilians who are very much trapped in the logic of this conflict,” Grandi said.
Many of the people lined up to cross into the non-governmental sector are displaced. They go back to see relatives or to check their houses, often damaged in the fighting and shelling.
Most of the people going the other way, according to the man who talked to Grandi, are pensioners. They must cross into the government area to receive their small pensions. To do so they must produce an electronic pass allowing movement across the line.
Earlier, Grandi visited an accommodation facility in Sviatohirsk for almost 200 people with disabilities and their carers who are displaced, many of them having been displaced more than once. Officially there are 66,434 registered displaced people with disabilities in Ukraine, more than four per cent of the total number of displaced.
In Sviatohirsk they are housed in a disused soviet-era sanatorium. The residents crowded around Grandi, some in wheelchairs, others blind. They cover their immediate needs with money from their disability benefits and have heating but no hot water, because of large, unpaid water and electricity bills.
The High Commissioner also met Vlada, a 15-year-old girl from a town outside Luhansk. Vlada is confined to a wheelchair and she insisted on talking to Grandi in English, a language she had taught herself. She also taught herself piano. Vlada said she had learned English to see the world, but, told the High Commissioner, “now I want to go to school.”
Before the conflict she did go to a school which had been equipped with ramps for wheelchairs. But the local school in Sviatohirsk has no ramps and the classes are on the second floor. Now she must study in her room with teachers visiting her to provide some education. Grandi said his organization will try identifying a solution to allow Vlada to go back to school. “I think you are doing great,” he told Vlada, “but organizations like UNHCR will have to remain engaged to ensure that people like you have access to basic services and rights such as education and a dignified life.”
As temperatures drop below zero, an estimated 800,000 people are living in difficult and dangerous conditions on both sides of the conflict line. With the first snow and freezing temperatures, the delivery of winter aid to remote communities becomes crucial.
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