Ukrainian Border

We spent the day at two reception areas for refugees crossing the border from Ukraine. A first for me in over 30 years of humanitarian work is seeing a pet ambulance at a refugee reception centre. Compared to many places this is so well organised thanks to some really professional organisations but there are still some areas that need improvement and hopefully we can help with that. Basics like safe clean toilets.

Between the two crossing points we had a 6 hour drive on a winding snowy road through the Carpathian Mountains. Stunningly beautiful. The second crossing point was tiny and I was keen to see it after dark. A trickle of stunned refugees came through. Curfew on the other side of the border means few are crossing after dark.

Traffickers are very present. One of our team, walking by the reception centre alone was approached by a man very keen to take her to Berlin for a ‘well paid job’. The refugees mostly have enough ‘stuff’ thanks to a strong relief effort. I saw some people are reluctant to give cash to big NGOs because they worried a % won’t go directly to the refugees. That’s true it won’t all go directly to refugees, it will pay things like supporting small local organisations training border police to spot signs of trafficking so they can intervene and rescue women and girls from traffickers and the back office costs of being able to make that happen efficiently and effectively. A worthwhile investment I would say.

Some people will still bring collected items themselves, I know, even when it just makes no sense. A few years back I met a British man in the big Rohingya camp in Bangladesh who had raised money to fly over donated goods - mainly used children’s clothes (ironically many of them would have been made in Bangladesh) from the UK. When I asked why he didn’t just give money to an organisation already in Bangladesh who could buy exactly what people needed locally, he told me that he wanted to do it himself so he could ‘see the gratitude in their faces’. I bumped into him the day after his ad hoc ‘distribution’ and he was really upset because crowds had gathered around him and he’d become so intimidated he’d just thrown the things at the out of the back of his vans. Then I became upset because he’d treated people like animals for his own gratification when they’d already been through so much. (And here I pick up on your points on this Arachne). It’s not all like this, I know, especially when reputable local organisations have specific needs they request. It’s the random collections of stuff that are a problem.

We’ve been up for 16 hours and I’m pretty much done for the day. Can hardly bear to think about the appalling hospital attack in Mariupol.