Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths: Statement to the Security Council on Ukraine, 28 February 2022

New York, 28 February 2022
As delivered

Mr. President,

I speak to you from Geneva.

Wherever you are in the world, we have all been watching the military offensive in Ukraine with a sense of disbelief and horror.

As we all feared, civilians are already paying the price. The scale of civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, even in these very early days, is alarming.

Humanitarian needs are growing at an alarming pace in the hardest-hit areas.

Civilian children, women and men have been injured and killed. Homes have been damaged and sometimes destroyed.

As of yesterday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported at least 406 civilian casualties, including at least 102 dead in these few days. The real figure could be considerably higher, as many reported casualties have yet to be confirmed.

We know, and we will hear, of course, much more from Filippo, that at least 160,000 people have been internally displaced across Ukraine, fleeing for safety. We know that figure is likely much higher – potentially a significant proportion of the entire population. And, of course, as Filippo will tell you, we believe more than half a million refugees have been forced to choose to flee their country in search of safety.

So, families are separated.

The elderly and people with disabilities find themselves trapped and unable to flee, not even able to get that small comfort.

The picture is grim – and could get worse still.

Aerial attacks and fighting in urban areas are damaging critical civilian facilities and disrupting essential services such as health, electricity, water and sanitation, which effectively leaves civilians without the basics for day-to-day life.

Bridges and roads have been destroyed, cutting off people’s access to critical supplies and services.

The use of explosive weapons in urban areas carries a high risk of indiscriminate impact. This is of particular concern in places like Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Civilians will undeservedly suffer the most from these attacks on densely populated urban centres, it follows.

All parties must respect international humanitarian law; take constant care to spare all civilians and civilian objects from harm throughout their military operations.

And parties should also, of course, avoid the use of wide-area explosive weapons in populated areas.

And the longer this goes on, the greater the cost will be for civilians.

Children will miss school and face a greater risk of physical harm, displacement and unimaginably severe emotional distress.

Women, so often disproportionately affected by conflict, as so often discussed in this chamber, will be at even greater risk of gender-based violence. Women and children may be exposed to other forms of exploitation.The economy of Ukraine could implode, which will further exacerbate humanitarian needs and create a ripple effect that travels far beyond Ukraine's borders.

Already the upheavals in recent days are deepening a pre-existing humanitarian crisis.

Eight gruelling years of the conflict in eastern Ukraine had already left 3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance on both sides of the contact line in the Donbas region.

And it goes without saying that humanitarian needs are now much greater, including the large-scale displacement, to which I have already referred across and beyond the whole country and not only in one region thereof.

Humanitarian workers are doing their best to respond. The UN has expanded its humanitarian presence in Ukraine. We shall continue to do so.

We are working to ensure we can scale up our operations as quickly as possible. And we had been preparing for this for some time.

I must say that for the last three days, however, the movements of our dear colleagues in Ukraine have been seriously constrained as a result of ongoing fighting, and our inability to receive assurances from parties to the conflict that humanitarian movements will be protected. And only this evening I was fortunate to receive the beginning of some assurances to that effect. We must hope that comes into reality.

In the meantime, local organizations and institutions are doing, as usual, the truly remarkable job that they do in all such situations responding to needs.

Local NGOs and the Ukrainian Red Cross are working tirelessly to support civilians and evacuation operations.

Health workers are working day and night to care for the injured. Aid organizations are providing psychosocial support to traumatized children and delivering first aid kits.

And we are all here this afternoon to support their efforts. Today, our most pressing humanitarian needs are for emergency medical services, including sexual and reproductive health services, critical medicine, health supplies and equipment, safe water for drinking and hygiene, shelter and protection for the displaced.

In all, 119 humanitarian organizations are operating in Ukraine, able to provide some form of humanitarian assistance, though clearly stilted in these particular days.

Right now, we urgently need progress on two fronts if we want to reach more people with aid that they need, that they deserve.

First, we need assurances from parties to the conflict that humanitarian workers and movements will be protected even during the most severe days of the conflict and not waiting for the conflict to subside. Even now, even today, we need to provide those protections to those workers to do the job that they want to do.

Under international humanitarian law, all parties must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of impartial humanitarian relief for civilians in need and must ensure the freedom of movement of humanitarians – a point we have been making in many different ways in these past four days.

And secondly, of course, we desperately need more resources.

Tomorrow, the Secretary-General will launch a humanitarian appeal for this crisis with two components: a three-month Flash Appeal for the situation inside the country, and a Regional Refugee Response Plan for the situation outside, under the leadership of Filippo Grandi and his office.

The Secretary-General, alongside Filippo, our NGO colleagues, and I will all call on Member States to show support with quick, generous and flexible funding.

And cash will be a major source of delivery of humanitarian assistance in the particular circumstances that obtain in Ukraine.

But this is certainly not enough.

The lives of millions of civilians are simply at stake. We know from other recent conflicts how brutal, deadly and protracted urban warfare can be.

We know how countries’ economies can be devasted. Infrastructure investment and development gains set back an entire generation. And we know enough to know that we do not yet know what will be the consequences of the events that we observe today.

These things should never happen in any country anywhere.

Every effort, of course, must be made to de-escalate the conflict.

The hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have taken the decision to leave their homes to seek safety elsewhere in their country or beyond, and those, even more of them, who remain at peril for the loss of basic services – of pensions, of support, of the services their children need, of the safety of the day that may come and may not.

I reiterate finally, Mr. President, the Secretary-General’s calls for the only thing that we must all pray for: an immediate cessation of hostilities.

Mr. President,

Thank you very much.