Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 11th Jan. Head of the UN political Affairs office Rosemary DiCarlo on Wednesday briefed the members of the UN Security Council members and told them the new year has brought no respite to Ukraine, with recent weeks seeing some of the worst attacks in 3 years.
Rosemary DiCarlo underscored the UN’s steadfast commitment to support all meaningful efforts towards a just, sustainable, and comprehensive peace.
She recalled that the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022 and the Council has met over 100 times to discuss the “harrowing consequences”.
She warned “And yet, here we are, on the brink of the third year of the gravest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War – with no end in sight.”
“The toll of this senseless war – in death, destruction and destabilization is already catastrophic. It is terrifying to contemplate where it could lead us. It must stop.”
UN human rights office has verified 29,579 civilian casualties -10,242 people killed, including 575 children, and more than 19,300 injured, including 1,264 children.
According to OHCHR, Ms. Dicarlo said between 29 December and 2 January, 96 people were killed and 423 injured.
She noted country-wide drone strikes on 29 December killed 58 people and injured 158 the highest number of deaths in a single day in all of 2023.
Over 25 civilians were killed, and 100 injured, in airstrikes on 30 December in the Russian city of Belgorod, which were attributed to Ukraine, she said
The cross-border attacks have continued, prompted some civilians to evacuate the city, Ms. DiCarlo stated.
She noted this past Saturday 11 civilians were killed in a missile strike in Pokrovsk, a town in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which the authorities attributed to Russian forces.
Ms. DiCarlo said civilians in frontline communities bear the heaviest burden of the missile, drone and artillery barrages, with 70 per cent of civilian casualties recorded in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
She added that the war’s impact on children is “particularly appalling”, noted that two-thirds of young Ukrainians have been forced to flee their home an estimated 1.5 million children are at risk of post-traumatic stress and other mental health conditions.
Ms. DiCarlo stressed that the missile and drone attacks are causing severe damage to civilian infrastructure, and thousands are without electricity and water supply in frigid winter weather.
“Even as the fighting rages, Ukrainians are working to rebuilding their lives and homes, investing in areas less exposed to direct hostilities,” Ms. DiCarlo told the Council members.
She said the UN, in coordination with government partners, continues to support local recovery efforts, including in the energy sector.
Ms. DiCarlo pointed to a recent positive development the long-awaited exchange of over 200 prisoners of war each by Russia and Ukraine that took place on 3 January, marked the largest such exchange since the start of the war.
Council was briefed on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, where more than 14.6 million people, 40 per cent of the population, require assistance.
Edem Wosornu, Director of the Operations and Advocacy Division with the UN humanitarian affairs office said that attacks and extreme weather have left millions of people in a record 1,000 villages and towns across the country without electricity or water.
Edem Wosornu, noted the latest wave of attacks has further impacted aid operations and affected humanitarian workers.
She reported that the number of aid workers killed has more than tripled, from four in 2022 to 15 last year, while another 35 were injured.
“The spike in attacks on aid storage facilities over the past two months has brought the number of incidents negatively impacting aid operations in 2023 to more than 50, the majority of them bombardments that have hit warehouses,” she added.
Ms. Wosornu said in December alone, five humanitarian warehouses were damaged and burned to the ground in the Kherson region. As a result, tonnes of relief items, including food, shelter materials and medical supplies, were destroyed.
Medical facilities have been hit throughout the war, she said.
Some 1,435 attacks on the healthcare system have been verified since February 2022, including the killing of 112 health workers, and at least 10 facilities have been damaged in the latest wave of aerial attacks.
Over 3,000 educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed, and many that remain are now being used to accommodate displaced people or as aid distribution centres.
Some 1 million children have no safe and reliable access to continue their education.
Ms. Wosornu said the war has also exposed millions of Ukrainians to heightened risk of gender-based violence, trafficking, and exploitation, with reports of people from ages four to 80 subjected to conflict-related sexual violence.
“This leads me to a deeper point about this war. Underneath the very evident physical repercussions for Ukraine and Ukrainians, there lurks a much less visible but no less damaging impact: signs of a deeply rooted psychological trauma that could affect millions of people for years to come,” she warned.
The humanitarians reached 11 million people across Ukraine.
They had requested $3.9 billion to support their operations in 2023 and received over $2.5 billion.
The 2024 humanitarian plan for Ukraine will be launched in Geneva seeking $3.1 billion to support 8.4 million people.
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