The UN has warned that “donor fatigue’ is hurting Ukrainians who have been displaced by the war. According to UN figures, the Ukrainian crisis is the biggest refugee crisis in Europe this century, with 6.5 million Ukrainian refugees having been recorded globally and 3.7 million displaced within Ukraine. The UN also said that over 14 million Ukrainians are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.
“If the donor community walks away right now, it’s not going to fix the problem – actually the problem could become compounded, and become more expensive,” the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) director general Amy Pope told local media in Kyiv.
Pope cited the lack of US aid, President Biden has been prevented by Speaker Mike Johnson from sending a $60 billion-dollar package to Ukraine, as the biggest hurdle in rehabilitating Ukrainians. US National Security Adviser (NSA) Jake Sullivan visited Kyiv almost a month ago where he assured Ukrainians that the aid would come.
“We will get a strong bipartisan vote in Congress,” Sullivan said during a press conference. “We will get that money to you as we should, so I don’t think we need to speak about Plan B today.” He also acknowledged that the process had “taken too long.”
The other problem that Ukrainian refugees face is the growing hostility of the countries that they are in. Poland, Romania and Slovakia home to most of the over six million Ukrainians that fled the country have so far been welcoming but depressed economies and shrill rhetoric from the far right groups have complicated the situation. Aid organisations attribute the increasing hostility towards Ukrainian refugees by the locals as “compassion fatigue.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
