Ukraine is still facing war
The war in Donbass in the East of Ukraine is in its third year; there is daily fighting, with military and civilian casualties. The war takes away people’s homes, their loved ones and their future. In the centre of Europe, in the 21st century.
It takes away the lives of children and elderly people, causes them to starve; every day millions of people struggle to survive in inhuman living conditions. All of them, without exception, need a guarantee of security and the end of war.
The toll of human suffering and misery for the affected people includes their housing, their ability to work, to earn a livelihood, and look after their families, schooling for their children, healthcare, medical and social services, the payment of pensions and benefits and their general well-being.
It is quite simply Europe’s greatest human tragedy since World War II.
The Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre is a private initiative that was created as rapid response unit to provide practical aid and relief to civilians. It started programmes to support injured and severely ill children, psychological assistance for children with war trauma, and it has become the leading provider of humanitarian food aid for the most vulnerable categories of civilians.
The Centre was established to reach out to help as many people as possible to get through the hardest period that everyone thought at first would last for a few weeks, which then became months, and then years, becoming now as we understand it – the new reality for Ukraine.
This makes today’s work of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre and the international missions (such as the International Red Cross, the United Nations, UNICEF, People in need, and others) all the more important.
Thanks to the combined efforts of the international humanitarian missions and the Humanitarian Centre during the last 2 years a humanitarian catastrophe in Europe has been prevented.
But the people affected by the war still need help and they need support mechanisms. This will need the effort and attention of governments, businesses and civil society. Humanitarian aid demands personal involvement, and every effort counts, if we are to put an end to suffering and to place humanity and the value of human life back where it belongs, at the very top of our priorities.
The Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Centre will present a report on the current situation with the war in Donbass and the relief work that the Centre is performing at a Press Conference in the Brussels Press Club on Tuesday 30th May between 14:30 hours and 17:00 hours.
