Tania has never found the courage to ask if her house is still there or if it has been destroyed by bombing, while Sophia, 16, woke up on February 24, 2022, feeling Kharkiv, due to explosions and sirens. She has now been a year and, after being displaced several times, she has helped evacuate other children, taking them west with her. Svitlana, on the other hand, is a teacher and every time she sounds the siren, she and her colleagues have to evacuate about 200 children, many of them with special needs. Then there are the stories of Kievan families, who bring their children in underground car parks or in subway stations. These are the stories told in the dossiers of two organizations engaged in the field: the report of Save the children “A Heavy Toll: The Impact of a Year of War on Children in Ukraine” and that of WeWorld “Ukrainian crisis, a year of conflict”. Pages in which the stories explain the numbers more than anything else. Dramas. As Save The Children tells us, they have been since the day of the invasion of Ukraine 438 children were killed and 851 were injured. And again, 4 children are killed or injured every day. “Everyone is exposed – explains the association – because sexual violence, bombings, injuries or death due to explosive devices, torture, destruction of hospitals and schools, now constitute a tragic normality for the country”. The war in Ukraine has forced millions of families from their homes. “Since the beginning of the conflict – says WeWorld – an estimated 17 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection throughout Ukraine”, while in Europe “8 million refugees have been registered, most of them in neighboring countries such as Moldova, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, to which are added millions of internally displaced people, most of them women, children and the elderly”.
A year of destruction, even in schools and hospitals – Save the children is present in Ukraine since 2014but since the outbreak of the war it has intensified its presence and is launching the ‘Children under attack’ campaign, with a series of awareness-raising initiatives up to 26 March, the anniversary of the war in Yemen. According to data from the organization, of the hundreds of civilians who have had accidents with explosive devices, about 40% died of their injuries and the 22% of these deaths concern women and children. Education has also come under sustained attacks this past year. Until the end of December, the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science estimated more than 2,600 schools damaged and over four hundred completely destroyed. In total, it means 20% of school buildings. There were also 703 confirmed attacks on health workers and facilities, with significant consequences on maternal and newborn health services, with reports on premature births estimating that up to 10% of all newborns are born prematurely in Ukraine . And there is violence: as of October 31, 2022, they are 86 reported cases of sexual violence against women, men and girls, including rape, including gang rape, forced nudity and forced stripping in public, torture and sexual abuse. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has documented cases of sexual and gender-based violence against civilians, with victims as young as 4 and “cases in which girls and boys have been raped, tortured, illegally confined, killed and wounded in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons”.
Forced to live underground – “Many children have witnessed the destruction of their homes and schools and the killing of their loved ones due to incessant bombing and missiles. And as the war enters its second year, the little ones continue to witness new waves of violence,” she says Soniya Khushdirector of Save the Children in Ukraine.
A year after the start of the conflict, many families are still forced to live in reception centers or temporary shelters because their areas of origin are under military attack. Sirens warn civilians of the threat of a rocket attack or bombing, urging them to take cover. So families and children can end up spending up to 8 hours underground without being able to get out due to constant alarms. According to the estimates of Save the children, in the last year girls, boys and boys have been forced to hide underground for about 920 hours, over 38 days without seeing the light. In Kharkiv, sirens have sounded more than 1,700 times for a total of about 1,500 hours over the past year, while the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions have recorded over 1,100 hours of alarms each. Along the front line in southeast Ukraine, shelling almost never ceases. WeWorld is present in neighboring countries, to support refugees fleeing the war and in four regions of Ukraine, Lviv, Kyiv, Odessa and Kharkiv. For the organization “the areas of the South and East that have just been liberated are at the moment the most problematic, from the point of view of security but also from the point of view of needs”.
The testimonials – Among people assisted by WeWorld there is David, 11 years old, who fled with his family from Mykolaivin a reception center of Lviv. “In the centre, there is no electricity for 15 hours a day, it is dark and cold. For us children – she says – it has become almost impossible to follow school online ”. “My city used to be beautiful, but now it is destroyed by bombing” recalls instead, Tania, a Ukrainian refugee in Chisinau, Moldova. In Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, attacks are more frequent. The city was recently rocked by a rocket attack that destroyed an apartment building and killed 46 civilians. A teacher from a kindergarten in the suburbs of Dnipro told Save the Children that air raid sirens are now a routine for his pupils. The basement of the institute is now equipped for drawing, playing and dancing. For many children it has become an adventure, but others start crying. “So – says Svitlana – in our refuge we have a place called a corner of solitude. It’s obviously better for those kids to be alone for a while and not hear all that noise.” Olena, 12, described what life is like underground, on the subway with her family: “I surf on my smartphone. I could do my homework if it was during the semester. We are underground because missiles are being fired at us and it is better to stay here for our safety. That’s boring. But better to be bored than to get hurt”. It is no coincidence if In Taddiamanaging director of WeWorld, speaks not only of a “humanitarian emergency”, but also of the long journey that will be necessary “to return to a pre-conflict situation, because – she explains – the material, but above all immaterial damage has been enormous”.