War in Ukraine poses immediate threat to children
UNICEF is working to scale up life-saving support for children and their families.
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The war in Ukraine poses an immediate and growing threat to the lives and well-being of the country’s 7.5 million children. Humanitarian needs are multiplying by the hour as fighting intensifies. Children have been killed. Children have been wounded. More than 1 million children have fled Ukraine as families desperately seek safety and protection.
We must protect all children in Ukraine. Now. They need peace.
The past eight years of conflict in Ukraine have already inflicted profound and lasting harm to children. Now, the immediate and very real threat to Ukraine’s children has grown. Homes, schools, orphanages, and hospitals have all come under attack. Civilian infrastructure like water and sanitation facilities have been hit, leaving millions without access to safe water.
UNICEF is working with partners to provide vital humanitarian supplies, and to reach vulnerable children and families with essential services, including health, education, protection, water and sanitation.
How to help UNICEF’s work with children in Ukraine
How is UNICEF helping children and families in Ukraine?
UNICEF is working around the clock to scale up life-saving programmes for children. This includes:
- Ramping up efforts to meet critical and escalating needs for safe water, health care, education and protection.
- Providing vital humanitarian supplies. On 5 March, the first batch of humanitarian supplies arrived in western Ukraine, from UNICEF’s Global Supply and Logistics Hub in Copenhagen, including personal protective equipment to protect health workers from COVID-19 as they respond to the critical health needs of children and families, as well as desperately needed medical supplies, including medicine and first aid kits.
- Working with municipalities to ensure that there is immediate help for children and families in need.
- Supporting mobile teams providing child protection services and psychosocial care to children traumatized by the chronic insecurity.
- Continuing emergency response efforts to address the COVID-19 outbreak, including by working with municipalities to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, and by strengthening awareness-raising and capacity-building efforts.