Ukraine’s authorities and the country’s charities have a long track record of dealing with crises, and their hard-learned skills – sometimes lacking in disaster-stricken countries – are already showing in the humanitarian response to the destruction of a dam on the Dnipro River by leaders say.
The state rescue service, which says it rescued nearly 2,000 people from the immediate flood zone, has been responding to thousands of Russian rocket attacks since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion 15 months ago. It has rescued civilians, put out fires, and helped people evacuate.
Then there is the network of volunteer groups that has grown rapidly since the invasion, with many people wanting to express their solidarity with the war effort.
It’s not just people who have proven resilient.
Ukraine’s transport infrastructure has also held up well during the conflict, despite numerous direct attacks – and transport can be a critical factor in any disaster relief effort. When the Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed on Tuesday, the government was able to evacuate people by train from the flooded area to the city of Mykolaiv.
“Local civil society, authorities, the private sector – these things are underestimated in a crisis,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator. “They are the first on site.”
Ukraine, Mr Egeland said, has “more logistics, more trained staff and more capacity available in the market” for relief efforts.
On Thursday, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a broader global response to the destruction of the dam, through which water from a reservoir flowed downstream. So far, the United Nations has distributed more than 100,000 bottles of water and provided food aid to 18,000 people and cash assistance to 3,500 people, according to Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Conducting evacuations and providing clean water are among the most urgent needs in the flooded area, but the task was complicated. Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro are still shelling areas under Ukrainian control. And there was also a reluctance to move by some residents who had endured months of occupation and then months of attacks.
Selena Kozakijevic, Ukraine area manager at CARE, the international aid organization, said many of the people living near the riverbank are elderly and suffering from illnesses and disabilities.
“Many still refuse to leave their homes, even when they are flooded,” she said. “This is a population that has lived there since the beginning of the conflict.”
Even after the flooding has subsided, people who choose to stay may face other risks for months or years, including polluted water and landmines drifting from their original location.
Ukrainian relief groups, as well as most international humanitarian organizations operating in Ukraine, are primarily made up of nationals who have the advantage of speaking the language, understanding the country and often having intimate knowledge of the affected location.
However, Ukrainian responders from the immediate area often face the added challenge of being drawn into the disaster they are responding to.
Even the best-prepared countries often struggle to deal with major disasters on their own, Egeland said. He cited Turkey as an example of a country with a strong emergency preparedness sector that has nevertheless struggled to cope with the aftermath of an earthquake in February that killed nearly 60,000 people.
A lot depends on the money.
Countries hit by a disaster need financial help to deal with both the immediate crisis and long-term support. In this regard, the international visibility that the war has already given Ukraine has made it easier for aid agencies to raise funds.
To draw attention to other crises that have seen large numbers of people displaced from their homes, the Norwegian Refugee Council last week published a list of the world’s ten most neglected displacement crises. All ten countries were in Africa or Latin America, with Burkina Faso topping the list.
— Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Cora Engelbrecht