UN tells how victims of sexual violence in Ukraine are helped

The representative of the UN Population Fund in Ukraine, Jaime Nadal, has told how the organisation helps victims of sexual violence in our country. It is about cases of rape during the war. The interview with Nadal was recorded within the framework of the project "Standing together. Improving the support system for victims of war-related sexual violence", which is implemented by the Ukrainian Women's Foundation in partnership with the NGO "La Strada-Ukraine" and the Association of Women Lawyers of Ukraine "YurFem" with the support of the Office of the Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and the Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Gender Policy.

In particular, Nadal said that the organisation he represents started working in Ukraine before the war. At that time, the main focus of work was domestic violence and support for rape victims. When the war started, the Foundation's specialists focused their work on helping victims of war-related sexual violence.

We realised that millions of internally displaced women and girls are at higher risk of domestic violence and war-related sexual violence," Nadal said.

He said that since April last year, the Foundation has organised 100 mobile brigades in 21 regions of Ukraine, which provide psychological and social assistance, make referrals to lawyers and work in resettlement centres.

During this time, such mobile brigades have already provided assistance to more than 160,000 people, mostly women," he said.

In April-May, when Bucha and Irpin were liberated and stories of victims of war-related sexual violence became known, the organisation initially tried to assist victims with existing services. But after negotiations and consultations with the Ukrainian government, the Rescue Assistance Centres were launched.

The first Centre was opened in July 2022 in Zaporizhzhya. Now there are such centres in 11 cities, in particular, in Kyiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Poltava, Chernivtsi, Mukachevo, Odessa, Kropivnitsky.

We are also in the process of launching mobile centres of assistance to the rescued in Kherson and Kharkiv. It should be said that our specialists have already worked and helped the victims when flooding occurred in Kherson," Nadal said.

He noted that the centres have already provided assistance to 16 thousand victims, in 85% of cases they were internally displaced persons.

If we talk about cases of sexual violence, there are 108 such cases. We are talking about people who dared to ask for help," Nadal said.

He emphasised that this figure is far from real.

Unfortunately, women continue to blame themselves, they are afraid of stigmatisation by society, this stops them from seeking help. I had many conversations with psychologists at the Rescue Aid Centres. They said that women and men affected by SNAP did not immediately start telling their stories. Sometimes it wasn't until the 10th or 11th therapy session. Because first they need a certain level of trust, individualised help, comfort, reassurance that everything is confidential and they can be unafraid," he said.

Nadal said that in the future such centres will open online offices as well.

Because of the stigma and because a certain category of people are not able to physically access the centres, we realised that it was important to launch online services to help survivors and created the Aurora online platform. There people can also get psychological and psychotherapeutic help, redirection to local physical services, for example, to the same Rescue Aid Centres or others, if such a need arises or a person asks for it.

Although this service is new, it is quite in demand in the community. There are now 424 cases. A quarter of them are about war-related sexual violence. Since the intake is online, it provides a high level of anonymity. Moreover, it can be used by people from the occupied territories who have no opportunity to get the necessary help - there are no services there, or people are afraid to turn to them. And that's why although there are not so many appeals, we realise that Aurora is very necessary," Nadal said.

Speaking about the problem of sexual violence in Ukraine during the war, Nadal said that this topic is "very complex and new".

Sexual violence during the war in Ukraine is always aimed at destroying dignity, it is a desire to terrorise people, it is a brutal violation of human rights. In the future, we will have a lot of work to deeply investigate this problem," the UN representative said.

As noted in the Foundation, at this time there is an increase in the number of applications, the number of victims of sexual violence. The specialists urged the victims not to keep silent, but to apply for help.

The interview was recorded by: Volodymyr DOBROTA, National Presklub Ukrainian Perspective.