Grandstand. While the fighting has been raging in Ukraine for more than a month, while international solidarity is being organized to come to the aid of the populations, alerts are reaching us on the situation of Ukrainian women and girls. Witnesses, authorities, refugees in other countries have been warning for weeks about abuses committed against women and girls: war rapes, prostitution, slavery, torture…
First within the borders of Ukraine. Rapes of women and children by the Russian army have been denounced for several weeks. On March 4, the Ukrainian foreign minister accused the Russian army of raping girls and women in the occupied territories. Alerts are also relayed by women’s rights activists. Inna Shevchenko, a Ukrainian feminist activist who had been a refugee in France for several years, reported the same day that she received messages from her hometown in Ukraine “according to which several women and young girls were raped by Russian soldiers”.
Outside the borders of Ukraine then. The number of people fleeing the theater of the conflict has exceeded 4 million, of whom 90% are believed to be women and children. However, women are the first targets of sexual violence in the migratory journey.
Marriage agencies taken over
In a recent opinion, the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (Greta) of the Council of Europe warned of the risk for refugees of becoming victims of human trafficking. Beyond that, women fleeing the conflict find themselves the target of pimps, whether it is organized pimping in a network or not. Managers of associations also alert on situations of survival prostitution: against accommodation for example. Such situations have been noted in Poland.
Recently, during an extraordinary meeting of interior ministers on March 27-28 in Brussels, the French interior minister made the following statement: “We are starting to see the presence of evil people near places where refugees are taken in to exploit women or children. So we really need a big mobilization (…) to protect these people. » Of which act.
These alerts go beyond the borders of Ukraine, as well as those of the host countries
neighbors. In France, several television reports from national news channels show men “storming” marriage agencies to “meet” Ukrainian women, or suddenly discovering a charitable soul by hosting refugees (but only women and girls).
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