By Isabella Brady
The recent Ukraine crisis has dispersed millions of refugees to neighboring countries; 90% of them being women and children. Already, 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine’s borders, yet, sadly the trials do not end for Ukrainian refugees, even after escaping the violence of their homes. Fleeing with what they can carry, women, elderly and children must travel in groups, and often alone to cross the border. Here, they are bombarded with a dizzying array of private and community humanitarian groups…and human traffickers.
Effortlessly dispersed throughout the chaos of refugee centers, and with hundreds of Ukrainians unaccounted for, the corrupt regime of the sex trade holds nearly unintercepted access to millions of displaced women, teens and children. Coordinator at Homo Faber, a Polish humanitarian resource in Lublin, Katherine Wierzbinska reports “[we see teams] waiting for people arriving from Ukraine and pretending to offer rides or lodging to women distressed and exhausted from their journey”. “Not only men”, these perpetrators often devise calculated guises to lure victims; promises of transport, food, shelter, or work are among the most common. Wierzbińska recalls multiple occasions in which “women attempt[ed] to procure female refugees at bus stations”.
Amid the pandemonium, veterans of the French Foreign Legion join humanitarian aid organizations and the Polish military at the border. Despite the sub zero conditions, veterans and volunteers stay in tent encampments to guide and protect millions of refugees. One French Foreign Legion veteran reflects “I think nothing’s being controlled. I’ve seen women who are scared, and kids are showing up at the border and no one knows where the parents are. It’s such an easy target”. An estimated 20 to 40 million people are trafficked globally; with millions of Ukrainian lives at stake, a war beyond Ukraine’s borders is being fought in order to protect refugees from a similar fate.