The global refugee pool reached an astounding 2.3 billion at the end of 2021. unprecedented 26.6 million68 percent of refugees are from five countries, including Syria, Afghanistan South Sudan, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced more than 4.3 million peopleUkraine to flee the country in just a few weeks, making this exodus the largest European movement since World War II.
Many large nongovernmental organizations have been focusing their efforts on the millions of refugees entering Poland. Although the Polish government has been welcoming to many white Ukrainians, it is also holding some refugees from Ukraine in detention camps. Both smaller and more economically disadvantaged countries, Moldova and Romania, have been trying to host hundreds of thousands of refugees.
“It feels like the eye of the storm right now,” said Walker Frahm, chief operations officer of Lifting Hands InternationalThe aid organization that helps refugees to achieve stability and self-sufficiency is called. Frahm, who spent a week and half in Moldova and Romania between March 1 and March 2, told Truthout Only 2.6 million people know that around 25% of the 400,000 Ukraine-flood refugees who entered Moldova after fleeing Ukraine remain in Moldova. Because the country cannot provide shelter space for all refugees, Moldovan families generously offered their homes to host the majority of them. Frahm said he had heard reports of discrimination toward refugees from Ukraine who are of Indian, Roma and African descent in the countries, although he said he didn’t witness discrimination firsthand.
Frahm stated that most people fleeing Ukraine were unable to understand why the Russian government was bombarding them, and only saw their stay as temporary. “They don’t consider themselves refugees,” he said. “They say, ‘Yes, I’ve been forced from my home because of war, but we’re going to go back as soon as it settles down.’”
But as Putin’s invasion drags on, grassroots networks are making plans to support people for the long haul.
When crises occur, there is usually an outpouring international support. There are often piles of aid at border crossings. Without proper storage facilities, on-the-ground organizations can become overwhelmed quickly. A loosely connected, informal network of grassroots aid groups, consisting of around a dozen people, is working to solve this problem. They are establishing supply chains in Romania, Romania, and Slovakia and plan to set up warehouse aid hubs for the long-term in other countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.
“We could just hop around from crisis to crisis, chasing the news cycle, but from a human perspective, from an impact perspective, we want to make sure that we don’t disappear as soon as the news goes away,” Frahms explained. “We want to be able to continue meeting needs as long as they’re there.”
Lifting Hands International conducted a needs assessment on the ground before collecting aid to ensure that refugees receive only the essentials they require. Then they posted the needs through social mediaAn app called JustServe. People can purchase requested items and send them directly to Lifting Hands International’s warehouse in Utah or drop them off to about 60 drop-off points throughout the state — a network that Lifting Hands International had established while supporting Afghan, Syrian, and other refugees for years. Lifting Hands International volunteers pick up aid from the drop-off points, which are mostly volunteers’ homes, and bring it to the warehouse.
We used to think it would be difficult to fill our Utah humanitarian aid warehouse. We are afraid it isn’t large enough!
We are thankful to Utah program staff, volunteers drop-off locations representatives, donors and partner orgs, for keeping this warehouse full. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/62ZwMmLUC7
— Lifting Hands NGO (@LiftingHandsINT) March 17, 2022
Another group is called Distribute Aid — a Swedish nonprofit that has specialized in providing logistical support for humanitarian relief in the U.K., France, Lebanon, Greece, the U.S., and elsewhere — coordinates shipments for grassroots organizations, including Lifting Hands International. “We have the time and the resources to actually look at what the import and export requirements are, to make sure that people are ready to get the cheapest shipping possible for them,” Nicole Tingle, Distribute Aid’s regional director for Europe, told Truthout. “And then they can focus on running their collections, doing fundraisers, making sure that they’re building out their programs and projects to the best of their abilities.”
Lifting Hands International and Distribute Aid will be sending their first joint aid shipment container with hygiene supplies and other nonfood items from Utah to an aid hub that had been a decommissioned event center in Iași, Romania. “Our aid that is going there will support some longer-term shelters where the initial support from community members is starting to peter out and they’re anticipating there will be many unmet needs as the war drags on,” Frahm said. They’ll be sending a container to Moldova soon, where the situation is increasingly desperate.
Distribute Aid is developing a supply chain visibility tool to reduce emissions, maximize efficiency, and speed up shipping delivery times. This tool will also take stock of the items that grassroots groups need and provide a snapshot of their inventory. “With our needs assessment surveys, we ask each group what they have too much of,” said Taylor Fairbank, Distribute Aid’s operations director, “and instead of every group having to contact every other group to figure it out, they just have to fill out our one survey, and then we can do the matching on the back end and suggest trades to them.”
They are also connecting disparate groups directly. “We’ve put a lot of groups that are in countries bordering Ukraine in contact with each other in WhatsApp group chats,” said Tingle.
To meet the challenges, some new grassroots groups have been created. unique needs of marginalized people fleeing Ukraine.
Black Women for Black LivesDirect financial support is provided to Black people fleeing Ukraine because of the so-called “Ukrainians First” policiesMembers of the African diaspora living in Ukraine at the time of the war are being held hostage by the government, while white Ukrainians can flee. “In just 5 short weeks, we’ve been able to help evacuate people out of Ukraine, help them pay for food when their city was under siege and even help them afford accommodation, transportation and medical aid,” the organization wrote on its fundraiser page. After raising more than £326,000 across several platforms and helping more than 2,000 people, BW4BL stopped raising funds on April 5.
Outright International is a global LGBTQ+ human right organization with headquarters in New York City. accepting donationsFind local, vetted organizations that help LGBTQ+ persons fleeing Ukraine to find shelter.
The refugee solidarity movement is happy to see a flood in solidarity for refugees fleeing Ukraine. However, they note that millions more Black and Brown refugees from Syria and other countries are still being held in horrific conditions all over the world. A shocking new investigative report from ProPublica, For example, It was found that U.S. shelters for Afghan refugees were not equipped to provide appropriate culturally-appropriate care. According to the report, some children are trying to commit suicide by starting fights and running off.
“These conditions are a choice that has been made again and again by political actors for their own gain — whether that be in attempting to unite voters against a common ‘enemy’ or using displaced people as bargaining chips in political disputes,” Tingle said.
In op-ed for Al JazeeraNhial Deng (South Sudanese refugee), activist and writer, wrote that he was happy to see the world unite in support of Ukrainians. However, he questioned where these world leaders and corporations were when armed invaders burned his village 11 year ago. “Where were the people of goodwill offering for me to stay with them instead of being stuck in a refugee camp for a decade?” he wrote. “People can — when they want — respond to refugees at their countries’ borders with compassion and love, rather than suspicion, fear and indifference.”
Distribute Aid, Lifting hands International, and other members of the refugee solidarity movement hope that new-found activists will make connections between the plights in Ukraine and those who have been forced to flee their homes.
While compassionate disaster relief efforts can make refugees’ lives easier, on their own, they ultimately won’t prevent the next mass forced displacement.
“People are fleeing climate change driven by for-profit companies, or wars driven by interests of imperialist governments,” said Fairbank. “The West is especially complicit in outsourcing the violence that is driving its economic growth on to poor Black and Brown countries and then punishing those who dare flee to safety. So not only do we have to create a welcoming atmosphere to those who make it to our borders, but we have to support grassroots movements in our own countries and around the world that are fighting back against politicians and companies who capitalize off these harmful conditions.”
