Press Announcement. Help survive: Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center will present evidence of civilians - eyewitnesses of the war in Donbass in Brussels

The war in Donbass in the East of Ukraine began in late May 2014. Over the past three years, there has been daily fighting, with heavy military and civilian casualties. The war takes away people's homes, their loved ones and their future. This conflict continues to take place in Europe, in the 21st century.

The conflict takes the lives of children and elderly people, causes them fear and hunger: every day millions of people struggle to survive in inhuman living conditions. All of them, without exception, need a guarantee of security, peace and an end to war.

According to OCHA, 3.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of these, 2.3 million people live in non-government controlled areas (including 0.6 m near ‘contact line’ which separates the military forces). 0.3 million people in need are IDPs in government controlled areas. Also, according to the latest Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis, an estimated 620,000 people in the Donbass are food insecure, nearly 38,000 of whom are IDPs. It is quite simply Europe’s greatest human tragedy since World War II.

The Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center is a private initiative that was created as rapid response to provide practical aid and relief to civilians in need as result of conflict. It delivers programmes to support injured and severely ill children, psychological assistance for children suffering war trauma, and has become the leading provider of humanitarian food aid for the most vulnerable categories of civilians.   

The Center was established to reach out to help as many people as possible to get through the hardest period.

This makes the work today in Ukraine of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center 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, the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center and local NGOs during the last almost three years a humanitarian catastrophe in the center of Europe has been prevented.

The work of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center has helped over 1 million civilians survive.

But the people affected by the war still urgently need help and they need support mechanisms. This requires the effort and attention of governments, businesses and civil society now, and in the future, to help them survive and to recover their lives. 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.

Eyewitnesses and victims of war will tell their personal stories. The Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center in cooperation with the United Nations will talk about the current humanitarian situation in Donbass and the relief work of the Center. Press Conference will take place in the Brussels Press Club on Tuesday 30th of May at 2.00 p.m.