“I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and started calling colleagues,” Alexander (Sasha) Galkin recalled of the first night of the war. As the director of Right to Protection (R2P) — HIAS’ long time partner in Ukraine — he had urgent priorities: ensuring the safety of R2P staff, and working out how the organization could pivot to the new emergency.
The global humanitarian community is failing women and girls displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war who continue to face a dire and deteriorating situation inside Ukraine and across the region, a new report shows.
Raphael Marcus, HIAS’ senior vice president of programs, recently returned from a trip to Ukraine and Poland. He explained HIAS' work there and some plans for the future.
HIAS is helping with the immediate needs of both internally displaced persons inside Ukraine and refugees in the bordering countries of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova where more than four million have fled.
While the Biden administration’s March 24 pledge to welcome Ukrainians is encouraging news for refugees and advocates alike, the announcement leaves many questions unanswered.
The scale of the Ukraine refugee situation — with up to 8 million people now expected to be displaced — is worse than “even the worst-case scenario,” HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield said during panel discussion hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on March 24.
