Geneva, Switzerland
Reuters
UN agencies on Tuesday launched an emergency appeal to respond to the soaring humanitarian needs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling for $US1.7 billion to help people who have fled the country and those still inside.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the funds would go towards providing shelter, medical support and drinking water and said the global body would expand and scale up existing programmes and establish new relief ones where needed.
“We must help Ukrainians help each other through this terrible time,” Guterres said in a video statement shortly after UN agencies launched a flash appeal for Ukraine.
A man carries bottles with water outside the regional administration building, which city officials said was hit by a missile attack, in central Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 1st March. PICTURE: Reuters/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy
“The crisis has turned very ugly very fast,” Martin Griffiths, the UN aid chief said at a Geneva press briefing. “We must turn that initial shock and disbelief and uncertainty about the days to come into compassion and solidarity with the millions of ordinary Ukrainians who now need emergency relief.”
Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said at the same briefing that 150,000 more people had fled the country in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of refugees to around 677,000 in a trend he described as “extremely worrying”.
Around half of those people are in Poland, with another 60,000 people in Moldova, around 50,000 in Slovakia and 40,000 in Romania. The needs could grow significantly in the coming days, especially if strikes on cities intensified, driving people to leave in a hurry with few supplies, he added.
Asked how he expected countries to share the responsibility for hosting them, he said that refugees were currently “self-distributing” throughout Europe. He added that refugees were an international responsibility.
The United Nations already had staff in eastern parts of the country as part of an eight-year programme that was only nine per cent funded as of last week. Donations have increased sharply since then, including around $US1 million of unsolicited, private donations to the humanitarian agency OCHA, Griffiths said.
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Meanwhile, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said the EU is preparing for “millions” more refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Johansson said it was difficult to estimate precisely how many refugees could stream through EU borders after Russia invaded Ukraine last week, after more than 400,000 had come through so far.
Many of those fleeing have met long waits at crossings into Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, the EU states bordering Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, we have to prepare for millions of people to come,” Johansson told a news conference in the Slovak capital Bratislava. “At the same time we have huge and urgent humanitarian needs in Ukraine, a lot of internally displaced people.”
She said she hoped the European Council would activate the temporary protection directive on Thursday giving protection to those fleeing, saying that would be the first time it was used in the EU.
The bloc was also looking at the possibility of deploying more people from EU agencies like Frontex to help countries most affected, she said.
– With reporting by JAN LOPATKA and JASON HOVET.
