Source: Save the Children
As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, around 630,000 children – over one in 12 of the total pre-war child population – who were displaced have returned home to face extreme needs relating to their family’s livelihoods, health, and threats to their safety, according to new analysis by Save the Children.
Save the Children analysed data from the most recent needs assessment by humanitarian data centre REACH and from the IOM to calculate the number of children in Ukraine who were displaced either overseas or domestically and returned home, only to face further poverty and suffering.
The analysis found that the majority of returnee children have been pushed into ‘extreme need’, as they return to damaged homes and infrastructure – and are 62% more likely to experience extreme need compared to the rest of the population. “Extreme need” is the second highest need categorisation in the assessment, referring to a collapse of living standards with the risk of significant harm to physical or mental well-being.
In the two years since the conflict in Ukraine escalated on 24 February 2022, millions of people have fled to safety, with over 15 million people fleeing their homes in what was the fastest growing displacement crisis in Europe since World War II. Still now, 6.3 million people from Ukraine are refugees overseas and 3.7 million people remain displaced within the country.
Two years on, despite the war continuing and airstrikes and explosions a daily reality, over 4.5 million people who experienced displacement have returned home, including 1.1 million children. Of these children, over 600,000 have returned to situations of poverty and danger, with around 360,000 returning to the war-affected and frontline regions, including Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Sumy, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Mary na-, 39, from Kherson, fled with her family to a village near Mykolaiv in September 2022. When the family returned home to a village in Kherson region, the windows were blown out, and Maryna’s husband had lost his livelihood as the result of landmines, Maryna said:
“The land was more or less okay, but the house was destroyed.
“When we returned here, there was no job at all because everything around was mined. Come summer they started to repair machinery that (was) left…so he (my husband) was paid a little hourly. Now, in winter, he has no job and nobody knows if there will be one in spring because the farmlands have not been demined.”
Being displaced can take a psychological toll on children and their families, as they leave loved ones and everything that is familiar behind.
Maryna’s daughter Anna-, 12, was keen to return home to Kherson, she said:
“People say, East or West – home is best. [The village where we stayed] was a much better and more well-kept place. You might have seen that we have nothing here. But home feels much better.
“We have cats and dogs here, she missed them a lot. And also, her grandma and grandpa.”
Many children return home to find their schools are closed due to the conflict. Anna- only att
