Valerya Tregubenko, a psychologist who works privately and for public health provider Clalit, and who has also been providing therapy to Ukrainians in Israel, says that seeking out help is far from a priority for the majority of those who have fled war. Local women working nearby exchanged wary looks when asked about the hotel. “There are always ‘those’ kinds of girls going inside,” one says, while the others nodded when asked if the place still rented rooms by the hour. “Of course, no one knew what kind of hotel this was,” says Gil Horev, a Welfare Ministry spokesman, referring to the fact that several Ukrainian refugees in wheelchairs were housed in the hotel, which had no provisions for people with disabilities.
“The authorities in Israel show no understanding toward Ukrainian women’s plight and treat their claims with great suspicion. Even when there is clear evidence for their claims, reality shows that there is no desire to move the wheels of justice and ‘waste’ public resources for the benefit of a foreign woman,” she says. Some details of the alleged crimes have been reported in the local media. In May, an Ashdod resident in his fifties was arrested and indicted for the alleged rape of a 19-year-old Ukrainian woman who had fled the war.
- Ukraine’s women soldiers are also often in the news, talking about their military experiences.
- Mamo pracuj’s ambition is to provide Ukrainian women with multi-faceted support, from legal advice to psychosocial assistance.
- Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human rights lawyer, is the director of Kyiv’s Centre for Civil Liberties, which shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
- While exploitative individuals are not new, “the real problem is the policy,” says lawyer Anat Ben-Dor, clinical instructor at the Refugee Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University.
- Like her colleagues “Phoenix” and “Oksana” , Sultan distinguished herself as a volunteer soldier in territorial defence units.
In July, her family was shaken when Ukrainian grain tycoon Oleksiy Vadaturksy and his wife were killed by a Russian missile while sleeping in their home in Mykolaiv. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the effects have been felt far and wide. Even before the war, the price of basic foods for millions of people was rising due to the climate crisis and COVID 19-related supply chain issues. The pandemic caused the number of food-insecure people around the world to double, to 276 million, according to the World Food Programme. Said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had plunged some 71 million more people into poverty, most of them in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, sparking fears of social unrest and outbreaks of new famines. Between the start of the war and May, the price of wheat across Africa went up by nearly half, according to the African Development Bank. “My nervous system is shot,” Ivanova says, standing on the edge of her sun-kissed land.
Global gendered impacts of the Ukraine crisis on energy access and food security and nutrition
A politically weak Ukraine, with high levels of corruption, will be prey to future attacks and the West may hesitate to continue to support its independence. Ukrainians are already looking to a future free of Russian interference. Political leaders are calling for international support to finance the reconstruction of the country – a cost estimated at between $350 billion and $750 billion and rising. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human rights lawyer, is the director of Kyiv’s Centre for Civil Liberties, which shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.
In families where both parents are serving in the armed forces, parental leave is no longer the exclusive preserve of mothers. According to Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, Hanna Maliar, by the summer of 2022 more than 50,000 women were employed by the armed forces in some capacity, with approximately 38,000 serving in uniform.
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When women do not participate, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Colombia, the durability of peace deals decreases by 15 years, according to a 2015 report by the Institute for Peace. Women are vital in the war effort – but better female political representation will be needed to rebuild Ukraine, argues Trisha de Borchgrave. She will reunite with Alisa after several weeks of psychological rehabilitation in the eastern city of Dnipro. Inga Chikinda, a Ukrainian marine and former POW, after a news conference in Kyiv [Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera]Alisa’s bus spent days stranded https://thegirlcanwrite.net/ in no man’s land in the southern region of Zaporizhia. Luckily, a woman at the filtration camp in the southeastern town of Mangush told Obidina she could take Alisa to Ukrainian-controlled territory. You lose the sense of time, and the most horrible thing is that you can’t stop it,” Ihor Kozlovsky, a theologian who spent several months in Isolyatsia, told Al Jazeera in 2021.
Many Ukrainian female combatants mention in interviews with journalists that they must avoid captivity by any means and that they are ready to die rather than being captured by the Russians. One indication of the recognition of women’s presence in the military and society’s rating of their contributions was when National Defenders’ Day was renamed in 2021 as the Day of Men and Women Defenders of Ukraine. Only a handful of cases of using services from trafficking victims get prosecuted. I’m happy for the family and overjoyed that they will be reunited,” Kuleba wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “Mothers and daughters were in captivity and their relatives were waiting for them,” he wrote, adding that 12 civilians were among the women freed. Thirty-seven women who had been captured after Russian forces took over Mariupol’s besieged steel plant in May were also released.
The Ukrainian military has tried to adopt more equal policies, but those have faced pushback from Ukrainian society, which largely sees women’s place in society as guardians of the home and family. This past year, I’ve been focused on how the human cost of the war has been felt unevenly, as Iwrote in the Washington Postlast March. Part of why the human cost is uneven is due to Ukrainian military policy decisions.