In Focus: War in Ukraine is a crisis for women and girls Headquarters

As a single mom, Emerald said she made the difficult decision to leave her 11-year-old daughter behind. She’s been everywhere now — from Kharkiv and Zhytomyr, to Bucha and the battle for Kyiv. In a November 2022 poll by Chatham House, 89 per cent and 83 per cent of regional and national civil society groups, respectively, identified the embezzlement of funds as the biggest risk when rebuilding the country. New appointments to anti-corruption institutions have yet to be made amid signs the process has languished. It has also provided temporary housing for approximately 120 Ukrainians who had nowhere else to go.

• With the real risk of sexual exploitation or human trafficking, women are trusted more readily when it comes to registering those internally displaced by the war, a number currently put at more than 4.5 million.
• Women are vital in the war effort – but better female political representation will be needed to rebuild Ukraine, argues Trisha de Borchgrave.
• Sultan—she chose the name because she loves Turkish soap operas—is one of three markswomen who have been selected by her country’s special forces for advanced sniper training in the forests of western Ukraine.
• Today, some of the Ukrainians in Israel are holding out hope that the new incoming government will do more to help them.

There also appeared new smaller teams such as Rodyna out of Kostopil in Volhynia and eastern Podollia teams around Uman. In 2008 there was introduced winter break competition which became regular later since 2013. UAB also encourages applications from individuals with disabilities and veterans. A report last year, The Impact of Covid-19 on Ukrainian Women Migrants in Poland, found that, even before the war, those most affected by precarious work were women who took up domestic care jobs. It is a sector characterised by informality, which leaves workers without adequate labour protections.

Ukraine’s domestic politics amid the war

“There are so many vulnerable people who survive in desperate situations and do not get any help,” one NGO worker who does not wish to be identified told The Times of Israel. The alleged rape happened at night, after weeks of lewd remarks, hints and overt suggestions of sex. A few months after arriving, she said, she was raped by the man who wrote the letter of invitation that had gotten her out of the war zone. “I really wanted this area to be liberated,” said Albina Strelets, 33, explaining why she spied on Russian forces and transmitted information to the Ukrainian side. She was arrested and spoke to me above the jail and torture chamber where Russians detained her for 16 days in August. While women can also serve in the Russian military and intelligence service, few women appear to be in Russia’s invading force in Ukraine. But Mariia Stalinska, 41, a bookkeeper whose first grandchild was born a year ago, enlisted in the army after Russia invaded her country in February.

Gender-based violence https://thegirlcanwrite.net/ is also pervasive, but cases continue to be under-reported. “The women hear about these jobs mostly from Israeli men posting in Telegram and other social media channels, jobs that sound glamorous with fantastic salaries. Most of the time, the women know it is sexual work — but even when they know, they don’t really know,” Sabato says, explaining that for the most part, the women she talks to are 19 or 20 years old.

Video: War in Ukraine is a crisis for women and girls

In contrast, what is known as the “Nordic model” — in which the purchase of sex is criminalised, but not the sex workers themselves — leads to easier prosecution of traffickers and their clientele. “If all men stopped buying sex tomorrow, sexual exploitation wouldn’t exist,” Salvoni says. Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February, in one office in Vienna, alarms went off. Two Ukrainian women “voluntarily refused to return to Ukraine” and will stay in Russia, the ministry added. Russia’s ministry of defence confirmed that 110 Russian citizens, including 72 Russian seamen, had returned from Kyiv-controlled territory “as a result of negotiations” in a statement published to its official Telegram channel. Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said it was the “first all-female exchange” in a statement issued to his Telegram account shortly before 7pm on Monday. Ukrainian women released during a prisoner exchange with Russia on 17 October.

This legal discrimination, Kvit said, deprived most women who served in the war in the Donbas of access to social or military benefits, military awards, and career opportunities in the armed forces. However, just as public attitudes towards women in in the military are changing quickly in Ukraine, so too are the country’s laws and government policies. But the presence of women in the Ukrainian armed forces has not been without controversy. Some analysts warn against assuming that the photographs and videos in the news and on social media showing women on the front lines means that they enjoy equality with the men they serve beside.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Anna Malyar, says there are now “at least 30,000” women soldiers serving in the army, or one in five of the official, pre-mobilised number. (The exact numbers in the army now are a closely guarded secret.) Most often, women soldiers fulfil back-line roles as medics, press officers, cooks, secret communications officers, or in the sensitive task of evacuating and treating bodies, dead or alive. Given equal fighting status with men in 2018, women today make up to 22 per cent of Ukraine’s armed forces, although their numbers on the front line remain small. This compares with NATO countries such as France, where women make up only 15 per cent of the armed forces, in Germany and Spain 12 per cent and in the United States 17 per cent. Access to livelihood opportunities and basic services, including life-saving sexual and reproductive health care and information, has been severely disrupted.

For example, in 2022 Ukraine adopted the national strategy on equality of women and men, covering the period up to 2030. Social attitudes towards women soldiers have also improved a great deal over the past few years. For example, the percentage of Ukrainians who agreed https://www.stylebydistinctlook.com.ng/the-ultimate-guide-to-online-dating-for-guys/ that women in the military should be granted equal opportunities with men increased dramatically from 53% in 2018 to 80% in 2022. Not only have many of these formal obstacles now been removed, but gender advisers and audits have been introduced to encourage a military culture that is more welcoming for women. 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. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, accounting for 70% of the world’s hungry, according to Plan International.