UN Emergency Chief: Aid must empower people in Ukraine
Following are the remarks by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths delivered to the press in Kyiv at the conclusion of his mission to Ukraine:
Thank you, Prime Minister, thank you, Denys [Shmygal], for receiving me. I was recalling that you and I met in this same building many months ago, early on in this war. And it is a great privilege for me to be back. Thank you very much indeed.
I was fortunate to visit Mykolaiv and Kherson earlier this week, and now also in Kyiv, meeting the Prime Minister and other leaders, as well as humanitarian agencies. And I'd like to share a few conclusions from those visits and from those meetings.
Firstly, I was very impressed by the close partnership which the international humanitarian community, which is what I represent, has with your authorities, with your Government here. But also, very importantly in the oblasts, the government of Mykolaiv and Kherson. I spent time with the mayors of those two cities, the heads of hromadas also. And that relationship is extremely strong, but it's very operational. Needs are identified. Aid is delivered.
And I want to thank you, in fact, for what everyone has been telling me from the humanitarian agencies, international and national, local, the frontline partners, to thank you for the very constructive and open relationship we have, even in these extraordinarily difficult times where all your days are filled with decisions and tragedies. You have provided the time for our agencies and our partners to do that job. It is a huge thank you.
Since the beginning of the war, international humanitarian agencies have reached just under 14 million people with assistance, and we will continue to do so under your leadership.
But let me say a few things about Mykolaiv and Kherson.
We were in Kherson, as I said. The Governor was spending the day with us, the mayor, the people. We saw distribution sites for food, shelter, clothing, mattresses, all organized by local authorities, handing out these small bits of generosity to the people in their great time of difficulty. I was in a school where UNICEF has a child centre. And as we were there in Kherson, we heard the artillery coming closer to us. So the shelling, which is a daily phenomenon in Kherson, we heard that. And it's not that we were under threat, but we were reminded of these still uncertain lives and futures of so many people, even in Kherson, where you have managed to regain so much of your territory.
We met in Mykolaiv, in a shelter provided by your Government to the displaced people from Kherson, some of these families. Some of them have been there for months, but some had recently arrived because their villages on the road between Mykolaiv and Kherson had been destroyed. And the following day we saw those villages, and they went back daily to try to restart their lives in those villages.
They didn't know when the reconstruction of their houses would happen, and it was a reminder of two things. One, you have an enormous challenge ahead to reconstruct the places where people live. But equally, you have people who want to go home, who are determined to go home.
And that is a great value and a great tribute to your people.
Three things came across very strongly. And you mentioned them as priority needs. Number one, no surprise, is the electricity. I was absolutely stunned to see the degree to which electricity is the gateway to everything else. Without electricity, there's no warmth. The weather is getting cold.
Without electricity, there are no medical services, there is no transport, there is no light.
And in many parts of Kherson there is very little electricity. So, the effort that you were making in Paris on the same day, Denys, that is, making the repair of energy infrastructure the absolute central priority is one that I saw how important it was to the people of Kherson. And the Governor of Kherson is trying to amend the electricity lines coming into his oblast and hoping that if they were repaired, that they would not be damaged again.
This issue is of central importance precisely because civilians suffer from the lack of electricity, civilians who should not suffer under international law in a conflict. That's the first priority.
The second is de-mining, and we talked about it just now. I was told, for example, that there are about half a million hectares of agricultural land in Kherson alone, which needs de-mining. You can't get the country back into production without de-mining. I think, as you were saying to me earlier, Ukraine is probably now the most mine-polluted country in the world. So the urgent international priority to the mines is one that we will also do what we can.
And then, finally, even in war, people want to see a future, and perhaps particularly in war.
Restarting elements of a local economy is a central priority for people. People want to go back to work. They want their children to go back to schools, they want transport to work.
They want the economy to work, they want employment to happen. And I am one of those who support you in your efforts to get that private sector back. Even now, even in places like
Kherson, where the war is still going on with those people on the right bank are still being shelled every day, restarting, jumpstarting the economy, anything that we in the UN can do to support that effort – we’d happily do so.
Thank you very much.
Q: Could you elaborate if there is a special UN programme in preparation for a potential second wave of migration of Ukrainians, both outside and inside of Ukraine, in case of further adverse developments?
Emergency Relief Coordinator: Yes, our leader here, Denise Brown, the UN leader in Ukraine, is with us. The agencies like UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency], the agencies like the International Organization for Migration, are ready for that, for such displacement.
As you will remember at the beginning of this war, there was the largest displacement experienced since the Second World War. Well, we hope to God that’s not going to happen.
But I would make this point very strongly: Even where there is preparedness, what is so important, and we know it from all over the world, is to get people aid to where they are. That’s why people who want to go home should be encouraged to do so.
Front-line services should be reinstated as soon as possible so that they don’t have to move, so that displacement doesn’t have to happen. And we hope that it doesn’t, but we’re ready.
Q: You mentioned about the economic aid to Ukraine from the UN. What would it be in general? And what is the situation with the creation of a tribunal over Russia and the expertise of the UN?
Emergency Relief Coordinator: I’m not involved in the second aspect; I’m strictly involved in the humanitarian area. But the humanitarian does cover economic issues and I’d like to reply to that first question.
There are a number of different things. I think, first of all, there is an enormous interest from the international private sector to do what they can to help the people of Ukraine, and that is what the Prime Minister and his Ministers mobilize, and that’s one of the reasons of course why [he] had to go to Europe, in Paris, this week. Mobilizing private sector support for the private sector is very important.
And the Prime Minister was telling me earlier about the way in which small and medium enterprises are being supported through grants, through services, to enable them to work.
But I want to give an example of what the humanitarian community can do about it: The World Food Programme contracted a large industrial-size bakery in Mykolaiv to produce bread for the people of Kherson. We saw the bread being made; we saw it being delivered in Kherson. In so doing, WFP delivered the humanitarian assistance, but they [also] invested in that bakery and more than 200 people came back to work there. That’s the kind of thing that we need to do. We need to have a double benefit if we can from humanitarian assistance so that the people can take their lives back into their own hands.