Emergency in Ukraine

Our Global Emergency Response team arrived in Poland in early March, just as thousands of refugees were crossing the border to safety.  We are supporting four refugee reception centres in Poland to ensure that volunteer organisations are supported in their initiatives, and that refugees are protected from human trafficking and exploitation. We assist families who are hosting refugees in their homes and training volunteers in psychological first aid.

In Ukraine we have established teams in seven cities to ensure a viable supply chain and where we can support communities who are welcoming people from the conflict-affected areas.  Along with identifying needs for critical relief items, Ukraine teams are conducting assessments of civil infrastructures including hospitals and water systems. Where local markets are functioning, the preferred option for delivering assistance will be through cash distributions.

Medair is offering psychosocial support activities and providing training in Psychological First Aid for staff and volunteers.

Working with local partners is key to this response – the local communities have been the true first responders and our role is to stabilize, sustain and standardize the services being offered to refugees. The need to support and stabilize volunteer initiatives in the reception centres is immense. The enormous volunteer effort in Poland and the constantly changing situation inside Ukraine means that coordination takes time. We have a great reputation among local partners, municipal administrations. We have earned this reputation by liaising with these partners and bringing in our sector experts to advise on the best way to respond.

Life-saving goods are urgently needed, but it is logistics which bring these to the needy. Just as important as the fundraising is the supply chain behind the scenes. When every second counts, the responders need to know what to do, and how to do it right. Professional humanitarian organizations have standard operating procedures, decision rules, and trained people who can deploy quickly. It’s better to donate cash rather than send individual packages to the scene. It is through professional logistics management that donations work to save more lives.

The best way to help now is to support emergency relief organizations, who know what is needed and have the necessary experience to respond, including technical and logistic aspects. These organizations assess the needs and respond accordingly. Medair has 30 years of experience in responding to humanitarian crisis for people affected by conflict and natural disasters. We know what is needed when people have lost everything.

People arriving at the border need practical support such as with food, shelter and medical services. But the trauma they have experienced must not be forgotten. People were forced to flee their homes, separated from loved ones, and had long and dangerous journeys. This has a huge impact on people’s mental health. The main health need expressed by incoming Ukrainians was assistance with stress. In Poland, Medair will therefore provide Psychological First Aid training to community volunteers working in refugee reception centres. In Ukraine, Medair will provide online staff care to mental health professionals and provide remote capacity building training sessions on the provision of trauma-sensitive support.

It’s hard to talk about future prospective. Nobody can predict how long the conflict will be going on. Many are hoping to be able to return to their homes, but nobody can say how long this conflict will take. We are there to make sure that people get what they need right now and to make sure that the support is sustainable on the long run.

Medair is working in some of the hardest hit countries around the world and it is important to bear in mind that there are also other crises. The UN International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) reports that food prices and shortages of staple crops are already been felt in the Middle East and North Africa. A major hunger crisis is also being felt in the Horn of Africa due to a catastrophic drought. Forty per cent of wheat and corn from Ukraine is exported to the Middle East and Africa, and the conflict has affected the supply and access to ports for transporting the grain.

Report specifically sites Lebanon: “22 percent of families in Lebanon are food insecure and food shortages or further price hikes will exacerbate an already desperate situation. The country imports up to 80 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, but can only store about one month’s worth of the crop at a time due to the blast in Beirut’s port in 2020 that destroyed the country’s major grain silos”.