by Sylivia Koberwa
 
Humanitarianism is defined by several principles: humanity, the belief that all humans are equal and have inalienable rights; impartiality, the insistence that we help those who are most in need and that we do not play favourites; neutrality, the commitment to action that does not intentionally benefit or hurt one side or another; and independence, the attempt to ensure that the action is not connected to parties who have a stake in the political outcome of the emergency (Barnett, 2014, p.2). This text analyses the relationship between African refugee mothers, their survival dynamics and humanitarianism in Rio de Janeiro during the Covid-19 pandemic.

My choice of approach arises from the stereotype that mothers and children are “mere victims.” Equally, Barbara Harrell Bond (2002, p. 52) argues that humanitarianism is about defending, advocating and securing the enjoyment of human rights. It also implies a shift from seeing beneficiaries of humanitarian aid as “victims” to be pitied, to survivors of adversity - who often demonstrate unimaginable strength and dignity in the most adverse circumstance”. The research methodology is inspired by my own ethnographic participant observation as an asylum seeker in Rio de Janeiro and observations from some African refugee mothers and their children living in Rio de Janeiro.

Dawn Chatty (2014, p. 80) mentions that anthropology's unique contribution to the field of refugee and forced migration studies includes carefully documenting what happens to people, their culture and society when they are forcibly displaced and wrenched from their territorial moorings, or indeed, when they are dispossessed through processes of forced sedentarisation and involuntary immobility. I, therefore, intercalate personal reflection and engagement with the forced migration literature to achieve this goal. The idea is to directly merge my first-hand experience of exile with the literature on forced migration to give an image of how African refugee mothers obtain humanitarian aid and survive in Rio de Janeiro and how COVID-19 has affected their struggle.
 
Experiences before the Pandemic

In 2018, I had to bite the bullet, MOVE to Brazil and make a fresh start with my 18-month old daughter after the brutal murder of my late husband in Uganda. We were hosted in Rio de Janeiro by Sheila, a Brazilian lady who was a friend to my late husband and later guided me to a humanitarian organisation and the federal police, where I sought asylum.

I visited the humanitarian organisation to ask about my daughter joining a public daycare so that I would look for a job. The social worker asked me what help I needed precisely, even after explaining. I was astonished, but I told her that I needed a recommendation letter to take to daycare schools. In my mind, I thought that everything would be a walkover, but I needed to follow the “protocol” of applying to the Education secretary like any other native.

I got this information from the three schools we visited with Sheila, which left me wondering why the social worker would not give me the correct information. I questioned if she knew the proper procedures for putting a refugee child into a public school. First, one needs to identify the schools in their residence, choose five options, and access the Rio de Janeiro municipal council’s website. Not forgetting internet access is key to completing the task. Then, fill in the child and school’s information. A registration number is generated at the end of the process for future use.

I waited for six months before receiving a phone call from the daycare school where my daughter started school.

There existed no formal procedure for ushering in refugees at this organisation about essential information and public services like the “CPF,”[i] an eleven-digit number that serves as an identification of taxpayers in the Income Tax and enables access to services and the “SUS”[ii] card that guarantees public health to the population in Brazil. A simple brochure in different languages like Portuguese, French, Spanish, English, and Arabic would be far better; for Harrell-Bond states that until refugees have access to effective legal remedies, humanitarian assistance will continue to be inhumanely delivered to refugees. (Harrell-Bond, 2002, p. 52).
 
I went back to the social worker to seek jobs information after a long haul of waiting for their contact. Shockingly, she told me that only private or institutional cleaner jobs could be available, though she was unsure because I did not speak Portuguese. She said she did not guarantee anything, despite sending my curriculum vitae to the organisation’s email address after requesting it. A volunteer translator enabled this meeting.

The undermining view of refugees is critical in understanding that the social worker did not think of asking me about my professional abilities and skills. Although she was aware that I had a higher education degree, fluency in English, and professional experience in banking, she had my CV at hand. This clearly shows that the mothers’ academic backgrounds and professional experiences before the displacement and integration processes are not considered by humanitarian sectors regarding professional insertion. This strongly contributes to the reproduction of the trope that refugees are “mere victims.” Moreover, this aligns with Harrell-Bond's seminal work (1986), in which she argued that refugees are not a priori dependent and passive, but rather that humanitarian institutions and political structures have created and even demanded the dependency of forced migrants upon donors and providers of assistance.
 
Then, in January 2020, I participated in the selection process at Abraço Cultural in Rio de Janeiro, the English course that Maimuna, an African refugee mother and former English teacher, had recommended to me. Maimuna played a significant role in getting to know the course, realising my potential to teach English professionally in Brazil, and feeling welcome in this country. I was approved as an English teacher. This course is significant in my life because it offers employment opportunities to persons in refugee situations. Even though I spoke some Portuguese, I didn’t feel integrated into Brazilian society. When I started to teach English in this course with centrality to the Global South, I developed a sense of purpose and belonging.

This work gives visibility to the agency of refugees because it allows us to deconstruct the idea of an opposition between refugees and hosts, who are considered agents (supporters, hosts, donors). Refugees are also their hosts and supporters. This experience allows problematising monolithic views, such as that refugees are not agents in this process. Several authors have recognised this problematisation as necessary (MALKI, 1995; HARRELL-BOND, 2002; PACITTO and FIDDIAN-QASMIYEH, 2013). Many mothers help each other through referrals and recommendations about jobs, public schools, hospitals, work permits and general survival ideas by themselves. As was the case between Maimuna and me.
 
For the first time, the image of an asylum seeker was optimistic as I started teaching my Ugandan culture to the natives at this course and could afford a small apartment for my daughter and me.

Patricia Hill Collins has pointed out that while motherhood is a contradictory institution that is experienced in diverse ways by black women, it can be empowering: “[m]otherhood can serve as a site where Black women express and learn the power of self-definition, the importance of valuing and respecting ourselves, the necessity of self-reliance and independence, and a belief in Black women’s empowerment” (Collins, 2007, p. 108). Similarly, these mothers strive daily to break stereotypes and barriers they face in society, even though their potential is generally belittled.
 
Life during the pandemic

In March 2020, I started to teach and just after moving to my apartment, the Covid-19 pandemic set in. Everything almost came to a stand-still. We entered into the quarantine period. I was in a state of panic as the course stopped classes. I was cut off from my friends and had no physical help. Then there was the worry about my daughter's well-being and the new bills I had just acquired.
 From the several interactions with the mothers, our main goal was to be able to support ourselves and children independently and try to live a normal every-day life. By the same token, Karen Jacobsen (2014, p. 99) argues correctly, “Millions of forcibly displaced people living in and outside camps seek to support themselves and their families often with minimal humanitarian assistance and in the face of active resistance by governments and citizens of host countries.”
 
In November 2020, I received an unexpected call for the first time from the organisation to pick up resources with a humble request not to inform any other refugees.

Indeed, “the world of humanitarianism tends to elude critical analysis” (Fassin 2011, 35). Why would the humanitarian organisation ask me not to inform any other refugees about the resources they were offering? Furthermore, Hamid (2012), Bauer-Amin (2017) and Souza and Manfrinato (2020) question the image of refugee people as “bodies that need to be saved,” the stereotypical imagery propagated by the media, as completely helpless and miserable. As Bauer-Amin (2017, p. 128) shows, refugees “even though they are victims of persecution, violence and more, they prefer to be recognised as active agents of their own lives”. Thus, as Jacobsen (2014, p.101) states, for refugees, losses incurred during the journey combined with a lack of access to assets in the host country means they are deeply disempowered and constrained in their ability to act and challenge rules and power structures. The strategies which refugees utilise to overcome such disempowerment are therefore of great interest, as they point the way to empowering other marginalised groups.
     
Agreeing with the authors above, I firmly believe that the establishment of a more sustainable system that promotes social-emotional, economic and political development is vital. It is therefore crucial that these mothers are supported to construct their lives beyond “the daily bread” and the “handouts” that humanitarian sectors give them. They have a wide range of knowledge, skills and abilities and are highly trainable. However, vainly, the aid givers continue treating them as wholly helpless and miserable.
 
References
​
Harrell-Bond, Barbara. ‘Can humanitarian work with refugees be humane?’, Human Rights Quarterly 24(1), p. 51–85, 2002.

Harrell-Bond, Barbara. Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance for Refugees. Oxford University Press, 400 pp. 1986

Barnett, Michael. Refugees and Humanitarianism. In: The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Chatty, Dawn. Anthropology and forced migration. In: The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 1-9.

Collins, Patricia Hill. The meaning of motherhood in Black culture and Black mother-daughter relationships. In: Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. Edited by Andrea O Reilly. Toronto, Demeter Press, 2007, pp. 274-289.  

Jacobsen, Karen. Livelihoods and Forced Migration. In: The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Edited by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bauer-Amim, Sabine. Resisting the current “refugee” discourse: between victimisation and reclaiming agency. In: Kohlbacher, Josef and Schiocchet, Leonardo. From Destination to Integration – Afghan, Syrian and Iraqi Refugees in Vienna. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2017, pp. 127-146.

Malkki, Liisa. Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, p. 495-523, 1995.

Pacitto, J. and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. Writing the 'Other' into humanitarian discourse: framing theory and practice in South-South humanitarian responses to forced displacement, August 2013, Working Paper Series No. 93, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/55c9f5344.html [accessed 19 April 2021]

Souza, Mirian Alves and Manfrinato, Helena de Moraes. Refugees of the Syrian conflict and the struggle for housing in Brazil. In: Leonardo Schiocchet, Monika Mokre, Christine Nölle-Karimi (eds.), Agency and Tutelage in Forced Migration. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2020. pp. 119-125.

Notes
 
[i] Cadastro de Pessoa Física (Personal Registration Record).
[ii] Sistema Único de Saúde (Unified Health System).

​Sylivia Koberwa is a Master’s student in Justice and Security at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a refugee from Uganda and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Social Administration from Kampala International University in Uganda. She is also an English teacher at Abraço Cultural in Rio de Janeiro. Her academic interests comprise motherhood, children, humanitarianism, human rights and social services in the context of forced migration.

By Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Adèle Garnier

* Originally published on March 4, 2022 by Refugee Law Initiative – School of advanced Study, University of London at https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2022/03/04/forced-displacement-from-ukraine-notes-on-humanitarian-protection-and-durable-solutions/. We would like to thank Greta Uehling for her careful reading and encouragement to publish this blog.

Introduction
 
The Russian invasion of Ukraine February 24 2022 marks the start of a new displacement crisis. In a statement on February 24, Filippo Grandi, the High Commissioner for Refugees, emphasized that ‘The humanitarian consequences on civilian populations will be devastating. There are no winners in war, but countless lives will be torn apart. We have already seen reports of casualties and people starting to flee their homes to seek safety’. UN officials estimate up to 4 million people could leave Ukraine if the situation deteriorates. As of March 4, 1.2 million people had fled Ukraine to other countries in the region.
 
Ukraine was one of 15 republics of the Soviet Union and became an independent state in 1991. Ukraine is a 2002 signatory to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. As of January 2022, it had a population of approximately 43 million. The country is bordered by Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. To contribute to the understanding of the evolving displacement context and the implications for the international protection regime and durable solutions, this blog provides a set of initial reflections. We draw on our backgrounds in refugee and migration studies to do four things:

• First, we survey scholarship on displacement and the Ukrainian context. The bibliography of sources used in this blog is provided at the end.
• Second, drawing on this literature, we provide a brief background context, sketching displacement occurring over the past century.
• Third, we pay special attention to Ukraine in the context of contemporary refugee politics, with a view to understand Ukraine as a receiving country, as hosting a large internally displaced population and as a refugee-producing entity prior to 2022.
• Fourth, we begin to carve out a list of initial issues concerning vulnerability, prioritization and pathways with a view to support advocacy on behalf of Ukraine.

 
1. A tentative state of the art 

As part of this reflection, we have surveyed a set of key (English language) journals in refugee, migration and humanitarian studies to map out existing scholarship on displacement and the Ukrainian context. We are aware these are Global West publications and reflect what is visible in these areas of research, rather than a comprehensive overview of existing knowledge. In doing this work, we have also observed that there are important contributions published in law, area studies, history and cultural studies. Note that we mostly bracket Holodomor studies (see here and here) in this exercise.
 
Journals such as Refugee Survey Quarterly and the International Journal of Refugee Law have not published on Ukrainian displacement. In the Journal of Refugee Studies, there are a few contributions on internal displacement and elections (Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska and Palaguta 2017); and politicization of religious actors as humanitarian providers and state failure (Leustean 2021). Forced Migration Review has published shorter interventions on asylum seekers in Poland (Szczepanik and Tylec 2016) and shelter (Dean 2017; Wetterwald and Thaller 2020) and also hosts older contributions on deportees (Uehling 2008) and statelessness (de Chickera and Whiteman 2014). As noted in an interesting contribution in a US law journal, surprisingly little attention has been given to the continued refugee resettlement of Ukrainians to the US on the grounds of religious persecution (Klokiw 2019)..
 
The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies features a substantial gender oriented literature on labor market participation, transnational marriages, motherhood (i.e. Górny and Kępińska 2004; Kindler and Szulecka 2013) but no contributions focusing on displacement and conflict in Ukraine. The International Migration Review is home to some older scholarship on Ukraine and European migration (Shamshur 1992) and on post-war Ukrainian refugee resettlement to Canada (Luciuk 1986). International Migration has a contribution on legal and illegal migration in the 2000s (Uehling 2004); and Migration Studies features publications on internal displacement (Uehling 2021) and socio-legal aspects of return migration (Kubal 2015). While we have found few scholars with a large body of published scholarship in this topical area, it might be noted that Greta Uehling, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan has been an important and prolific contributor to this field for more than two decades.
 
In the adjacent field of humanitarian studies Journals such as Disasters, the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs and the Journal of Humanitarian action have nothing on Ukrainian displacement (though note Ukraine focus as part of the large scholarship on famine relief (Werther 2021). A contribution on Polish aid to Ukrainian internally displaced people (IDPs) is published in Humanitarian logistics (Piotrowicz 2018).
 
While the academic specialist fields of refugee and forced migration studies have a limited track record on Ukraine, a larger body of work on forced displacement can be found in area studies, (with a key point of reference being a special issue in Europe-Asia Studies 72.3 (2020)). This includes research on the IDPs (Kuznetsova and Mikheieva 2020) in Crimea (Charron 2020) and Donbas (Sereda 2020; Sasse and Lackner 2020); media representations of IDPs (Rimpiläinen 2020) IDPs and public space (Lazarenko 2021) and gender (Kuznetsova 2021; Khrystova and Uvarova 2022); humanitarian crisis (Scrinic 2015; Quinn 2015; Bulakh 2017).
 
2. A century of Ukrainian displacement and resettlement 

In the following, drawing on historical scholarship and scholarship in history, we provide a brief chronology of displacement in Ukraine over the past century. There was substantial out-migration to North America prior to the First World War (Chyz 1939). Between the early 1920s and 2020, Ukraine – until after the Second World War divided into Western and Eastern Ukraine – has experienced numerous periods of mass emigration, forced relocation and displacement. Before the first World War, poverty and land scarcity led to large scale migration from Western Ukraine (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later Poland and Romania) to North America. In the East, peasants were subjected to massive, forced relocations to other parts of the Czarist empire. The annexation and deportation continued under Stalin. The Holodomor –to kill by starvation –was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine between 1932-1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The famine was exacerbated by the governments rejection of outside aid, confiscation of household foodstuffs and the restriction of population movements (Basciani 2011). In addition to ethnic Ukrainians, national minorities were also oppressed and deported in the 1930s and 1940s (ethnic Germans, Crimean Tatars, Poles, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Greeks) (Malynovska 2006). As the international refugee regime began taking shape, the emergence of anti-immigration laws in the US (the Immigration Act of 1917, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the Immigration Act of 1924) significantly curtailed transnational Ukrainian migration. Groups displaced by the first world war were again displaced by World War II from reception countries in eastern Europe (Kulischer 1949).
 
The Second World War took an enormous toll on Ukraine. While there are no reliable numbers available, 5 to 7 million people are estimated to have died, and an estimated additional 2.3 million Ukrainians were sent to Germany to perform forced labor. The repatriation agreement signed by Allied powers in at the Yalta conference in February 1945 categorized Ukrainians from the East as Soviet subjects to be forcibly repatriated to the USSR, and many fought to gain recognition as refugees. Ukrainian Displaced Persons (DPs) residing in the German, French, and British zones of temporary occupation at the end of the Second World War were a very mixed group comprising of Ukrainian prisoners of war taken by the Soviets, guerillas fighting against the Soviets, slave labor for the Nazis and Nazi-sympathizing Ukrainians. After the War, this group became classified as political refugees (Stebelsky 1991). In terms of overseas resettlement, in 1947, in a first for Australia, the country joined Argentina, Canada and the US in resettling DPs. as part of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) resettlement agreement (Persian 2018). Post-war resettlement to Canada was a short-lived affair, due to conflicts between the established diaspora community and arriving DPs (Luciuk 1986). With respect to the US, of the 352,000 people admitted to the US under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, 15 percent were Ukrainian, and most were Ukrainian speakers from Western Ukraine. Most Ukrainian immigrants were subject to the limitations that the National Origins Quota System regulating immigration from 1924 to1965. A specific case concerns the postwar trajectories of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from Ukraine. Under Nazi resettlement, this population had ended up in Germany and Austria. While not eligible to be assisted by IRO, some did seek assistance. Broadly belonging to Catholic, Protestant, and Mennonite faith groups, the latter was comparatively much more successful in utilizing religious networks for overseas emigration. While individual efforts to switch national identification mostly failed and petitioners living in ‘mixed’ marriages had some success, the well-organized Mennonites managed a ‘collective conversion’ from German to Dutch nationality and resettled as a group (Panagiotidis 2020). By 1955 only about 250,000 of the 2.3 million Ukrainians displaced because of World War II had been allowed to relocate abroad (Wenner 2010). By 1952, most Ukrainian refugees in DP camps had been resettled (Dyczok 2000).
 
In the post-World War period, religion has been a key structuring factor in resettlement. Post-World War II Ukrainian refugees tended to be Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic; beginning especially in the late 1970s, numerous Soviet Jewish refugees arrived in the US (Basok and Brym 1991), along with smaller populations of Evangelicals, Baptists and Pentecostals. As president Gorbachev’s glasnost policy allowed people to apply for emigration on the grounds of religious persecution, refugees from various evangelical faiths settled at the end of the Cold War. Ukraine experienced economic crisis from the late 1980s until the late 2000s, engendering high outward migration. However, it was the 1990 Lautenberg Amendment that became a primary driver of Ukrainian immigration to the United States. On denominational grounds, Ukrainians were admitted as religious groups with a lesser group-based burden of proof with respect to discrimination. While initially intended as a temporary protection mechanism for persecuted religious minorities in the Soviet Union, it has become a central gateway for Ukrainian Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Baptist and Evangelicals (Klokiw 2019)..
 
Whereas the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act took refugee admissions under 30,000 per year. Between 2001 and 2003, the US maintained a separate designation, and an associated quota, for countries from the ‘former Soviet Union.’ This quota was removed in 2004, when Ukraine was integrated into a broader ‘Europe’ refugee quota which led to a rapid decline of admissions. Nevertheless by 2011, Ukraine was among the ten countries with the most refugee arrivals (Capps 2015) during FY 2000 through FY 2011. By 2013, only 227 Ukrainian refugees were admitted (Klokiw 2019). At the Russian occupation of Crimea and the subsequent arrival of the Trump administration, the numbers surged again. While the Trump administration slashed the resettlement quota, by 2019, Ukrainians were one of the top groups resettled as refugees in the United States, with a 75 percent growth in arrivals. On a parallel track, Ukrainians have received high admissions under US visa schemes, making up the highest portion of overall European admissions from 2009 to 2018 (Klokiw 2019).
 
3. The politics of displacement prior to the 2022 invasion
 
Ukraine has since the end of the Soviet Union been a country of origin, transit and arrival for forced migration, as well as a provider of ‘durable solutions` for ethnic Ukrainians returning to the country form which they had been exiled during the Soviet era.
 
In the 1990s, the ethnic composition of Ukraine changed significantly. Many ethnic Russians left, and many ethnic Ukrainians returned, including Tatars originally from Crimea, whose returned population increased fivefold between 1989 and 2001. Returnees arriving after the adoption of a new citizenship law in November 1991 did not have Ukrainian citizenship on arrival, as the new law linked citizenship to permanent residence in Ukraine. A sizable population was stateless, as Tatars also had not been granted citizenship of the ex-Soviet Republic in which they lived before their departure. The population from ex-Soviet Republics in which there were conflicts also increased, including from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
 
Ukraine developed a refugee protection framework from the 1990s, with the adoption of the Law on Refugees in 1993, the opening of a UNHCR Liaison Office in Kyiv in 1995, the ratification of the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol in 2002. Asylum claims were processed from 1993. Asylum procedures were criticized as weak, with high levels of forced returns for instance of Chechens. Still, Ukraine recognizes several thousands of refugees a year, and this in some years has included sizable contingent of Afghan refugees since the 1990s. Ukraine in the 1990s was also a country of transit for irregular migrants, with 100 000 migrants being detained at its western borders between 1991 and 2003. Human trafficking, particularly of young women, also increased in the 1990s, and Ukraine ratified the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in 2000. With the expansion of the European Union in 2004, and the perspective of an association agreement with Ukraine, the European Union focused on capacity building and contributed to fund asylum processing centres.
 
The suspension of negotiations of the EU association agreement by a pro-Russia government in 2013 led to the Maidan protests in Kyiv and a pro-European regime change the following year, rapidly followed by Russia’s occupation of Crimea. 5.2 million people were affected by the conflict and 1.6 million were displaced within and outside Ukrainian borders, Ukrainian IDPs have moved westward. As of 2019, there were 1.4 million IDPs in Ukraine, the 12th-largest population of IDPs worldwide Outside the borders, most Ukrainians sought refuge in Russia, but many also went to European Union countries, where the refugee recognition rate was very low – many Ukrainian nationals did not apply for asylum.
 
As of 2020, the main countries of origin of refugees and asylum seekers in Ukraine were Afghanistan, Syria, Russia and Bangladesh (the latter almost only asylum seekers), with a total of 2249 refugees and 2359 asylum seekers. There were also 35,875 stateless people. Besides, at the end of 2019, IOM estimated that there were between 37,000 and 60,900 irregular migrants in Ukraine, of various nationalities, concentrated in large cities, and with the largest shares from South Asia, West Africa and the Horn of Africa. The majority were young men with secondary education who had arrived with valid visas as tourists or students.
 
4. Pointers for advocacy 

How the exodus from Ukraine will play out remains to be seen. Many of the structural impediments to transit and (temporary) settlement are not present in the current context. Ukrainians don’t require Schengen visas to enter the European union and can stay for up to 90 days. Furthermore, in an unprecedented move, Slovakia admits Ukrainians without valid passports.‘If they pass an individual assessment conducted by border officials’. Poland has also explained that they will admit those without valid documents. At the supranational level, the European Union has for the first time triggered the adoption of the EU temporary protection directive. The directive grants immediate protection, to Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians legally residing in Ukraine and fleeing toe war for one year. In terms of the traditional framework for durable solutions, traditional overseas resettlement countries have announced visa extensions for Ukrainians and priority processing of family reunification. Ukrainian diasporas, for instance in Canada, which hosts of one of the largest population with Ukrainian origins, are mobilizing resources to support their fellow nationals. Canada has also announced an emergency, two-year temporary protection measure for Ukrainian nationals fleeing the war, with no ceiling on eligible applications. Public opinion and politicians at municipal and provincial levels have signaled they will welcome Ukrainian refugees. Several countries are pressured to do more than the changes they first announced, such as the UK and Australia.
 
At the same time, vulnerability is gendered: all men between 18 and 60 have been conscripted and denied exit from the country. Also, Ukrainian men are currently prevented from leaving Ukraine so as to be available in case of mass mobilization and this appears to disregard concerns for men in vulnerable situations or the impact of family separation. From this perspective, gender-based advocacy focusing on men is necessary, especially as it has not been a priority in refugee advocacy.
 
Furthermore, the politics of solidarity are not universal: solidarity with Ukrainian refugees does not seem to apply to non-White people also fleeing Ukraine. Instances of discrimination and racism has been reported in Ukraine and at the Polish borders, with African students in Ukraine being trampled on or stopped from fleeing by border guards. The situation has been denounced by the African Union. All advocates should support fair treatment for all people affected by the war regardless of their ethnicity and migratory status.
 
Finally, vulnerability is tiered. The invasion has meant further displacement for refugees who had fled to Ukraine, such as Afghans who had fled the Taliban‘s return to power in 2021. Governments and civil society providing support to forced migrants from Ukraine should ensure non-Ukrainians are not just not discriminated against, but rather prioritized given their particular vulnerability.
 
We don’t know how long the invasion will last, what kind of conflict this will develop into and what the civilian toll will be. Our intervention, albeit a tentative exercise, aims to provide a background context for discussions – both scholarly and in various practitioner and activist communities – about humanitarian protection and durable solutions moving forward.
  
 
Provisional bibliography
 
Basciani, Alberto. “From Collectivization of the Great Famine: Eyewitness Statements on the Holodmor by Refugees from the Ukrainian SSR, 1930–1933.” Holodomor Studies 3 (2011): 1-27.

Basok, Tanya, and Robert J. Brym. “Soviet‐jewish emigration and resettlement in the 1990s an overview.” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 4.3-4 (1991): 359-372.

Bulakh, Tania. “‘Strangers among ours’: State and civil responses to the phenomenon of internal displacement in Ukraine.” Migration and the Ukraine Crisis (2017): 49.

Capps, Randy, et al. “Integrating refugees in the United States: The successes and challenges of resettlement in a global context.” Statistical Journal of the IAOS 31.3 (2015): 341-367.

Charron, Austin. “‘Somehow, we cannot accept it’: Drivers of internal displacement from Crimea and the forced/voluntary migration binary.” Europe-Asia Studies 72.3 (2020): 432-454.

Chyz, Yaroslav J. The Ukrainian immigrants in the United States. Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association, 1939.

Dean, Laura A. “Repurposing shelter for displaced people in Ukraine.” Forced Migration Review 55 (2017): 49-50.

Dean, Laura A. “The Diffusion of Human Trafficking Policies in the Post-Soviet Region: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Adoption in Ukraine, Latvia, and Russia” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 19.5 (2017): 403-418.

de Chickera, Amal, and Joanna Whiteman. “Discrimination and the human security of stateless people.” Forced Migration Review 46 (2014): 56.

Dyczok, Marta. “The Last Phase of Displacement (Summer 1947–January 1952).” The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2000. 148-170.

Górny, Agata, and Ewa Kępińska. “Mixed marriages in migration from the Ukraine to Poland.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.2 (2004): 353-372.

International Organisation for Migration. Irregular Migrants in Ukraine, Analytical Summary. 2019. https://iom.org.ua/sites/default/files/irregular_migrants_in_ukraine_eng.pdf

Khrystova, Ganna, and Olena Uvarova. “Gender Component of Internal Displacement in Ukraine: A Case of Business (In) Capability to Localize Human Rights Impact Assessment.” Business and Human Rights Journal (2022): 1-

Kindler, Marta, and Monika Szulecka. “The economic integration of Ukrainian and Vietnamese migrant women in the polish labour market.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39.4 (2013): 649-671.

Klokiw, Andrew N. “A Fifth Wave: A Contemporary Comparative Study of Ukrainian Immigration to the United States, 1870-2019.” Texas Law Review 98 (2019): 757.

Kubal, Agnieszka. “Legal consciousness as a form of social remittance? Studying return migrants’ everyday practices of legality in Ukraine.” Migration Studies 3.1 (2015): 68-88.

Kulischer, Eugene M. “Displaced persons in the Modern World.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 262.1 (1949): 166-177.

Kuznetsova, Irina. “The Feminist Geopolitics of Donbas: The Role of Art in Challenging Bordering.” Region: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 10.1 (2021): 61-83.

Kuznetsova, Irina, and Oksana Mikheieva. “Forced displacement from Ukraine’s war-torn territories: intersectionality and power geometry.” Nationalities Papers 48.4 (2020): 690-706

Lazarenko, Valeria. “Renaming and Reclaiming Urban Spaces in Ukraine: The Perspective of Internally Displaced People.” Nationalities Papers (2021): 1-20.

Leustean, Lucian N. “When States Fail: The Politics of Orthodox Churches, Forced Displacement and Humanitarian Structures in Serbia and Ukraine.” Journal of Refugee Studies 34.2 (2021): 1923-1945.

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Malynovska Olena Caught Between East and West, Ukraine Struggles with Its Migration Policy. Migration Policy Institute. 2006. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/caught-between-east-and-west-ukraine-struggles-its-migration-policy

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By Monika Mokre

It was at the end of the 1990s when the EU once again realized that it was not able to act unilaterally and in solidarity in times of crisis. While this had already become obvious regarding the war in Bosnia and the genocide there, the Kosovo crisis, and the influx of refugees due to it was another case in point. Basically, these and other failures showed that, after then 50 years of European integration, nationalism of the Member States still prevailed.

Thus, in 2001 the “Temporary Protection Directive”[1] was issued. In its contents, it provides a pragmatic and effective solution for times in which the asylum systems of Member States are overwhelmed by the number of refugees. For a period of one to three years, those concerned by the directive shall hold a residence permit including the right to accommodation, health services, social services, education, and access to the labour market. In order to distribute the burden of this situation, displaced persons can be transferred between Member States if the respective Member States as well as the persons concerned agree.

In its procedures, the Directive follows the usual legislative procedure of the EU: the existence of a mass influx of refugees has to be established in a proposal by the Commission which is then decided upon by the Council of the European Union with qualified majority voting (i.e., a majority of states representing a majority of the population of the EU).

Until early March 2022, the Directive has never been used in the more than 20 years of its existence although its implementation was discussed three times: In 2011, Italy and Malta called for its activation due to the high influx of refugees in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, especially from Libya. In the crisis of 2015, UNHCR and some Members of the European Parliament proposed to make use of it. And in 2021, EU foreign policy official Josep Borrell discussed the possibility of invoking the directive to aid Afghan refugees following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In none of these cases, the European Commission saw the need for a proposal, probably due to the resistance of those Member States not directly affected by the situation.

Due to its obvious dysfunctionality, the Commission proposed in 2020 to repeal the directive and to replace it by a regulation[2] as part of the foreseen “Pact on Asylum and Migration”. This directive could be implemented by the Commission without inclusion of the Council and would focus on the respective Member State facing a mass influx of refugees.

The regulation would allow for temporary protection without asylum procedures as well as for increased possibilities for asylum procedures at the border. These accelerated asylum procedures at the border form a prominent and highly problematic part of the foreseen pact. Inter alia, it is foreseen that “in normal times”, persons from a country with less than 20% positive asylum decisions (in EU average) can be rejected in such a fast-track procedure. According to the directive, in times of crisis, persons from a country with less than 75% positive asylum decisions could be rejected at the border.

The regulation also refers to general solidarity measures according to which Member States have either to accept a certain number of asylum seekers (calculated on the base of population and GDP) or deliver a financial contribution, the latter inter alia on the base of “return sponsorships”, i.e., organizing and financing voluntary or involuntary return to the country of origin.

As the whole “Pact on Asylum and Migration”, this regulation has not been issued yet. Instead, the Directive of 2001 has been activated for the first time in its history and in an incredibly short time. For once, the EU has shown an ability to speak with one voice, overcoming at this point the nationalism of the Member States. It is easy to understand the reasons for this unprecedented situation. First, an external enemy has always been the most effective means to create and re-enforce a feeling of collective identity. Even the preamble of the Council Decision refers to the invasion undermining “European and global security”. Second, this new influx of refugees concerns first and foremost those countries who have always been opposed to every form of EU solidarity in accepting refugees, i.e., the Višegrad states Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary as well as Austria.

Thus, while it is laudable and of utmost importance that Ukrainian citizens will be able to enjoy temporary protection in the EU, the most recent EU policies do not show a rejection of nationalist principles but, rather, a new application of them, enlarged by EU supra-nationalism. Again, EU refugee politics do not focus on people in danger but on its own interests. For the time being, these interests have shifted – from a general rejection of refugees to the protection of a specific group of refugees.

And this group is very specific. It includes Ukrainian citizens, persons under international protection in Ukraine and the families of these two groups. Persons with a permanent residence in the Ukraine who “are unable to return in safe and durable conditions to their country of origin” should also get protection – either according to the Council Decision or in another national form. Persons with a temporary residence in Ukraine not able to return to their country of origin – e.g., students or workers, but also asylum seekers – may be granted protection according to the Decision. The – legally not binding – introduction to the Decision recommends that they should at least be allowed visa free entry in the EU in order to return to their country of origin. People with a – permanent or temporary – residence in the Ukraine who could return to their country of origin without being in danger are not mentioned at all.

The proposal of the Commission went beyond the very narrow scope of the final decision: it included everybody “unable to return in safe and durable conditions to their country of origin” as well as everybody with a long-term stay in Ukraine, irrespectively of the conditions in the country of origin.

This would have made a significant difference as many inhabitants of Ukraine do not hold Ukrainian citizenship. There were 76.000 foreign students in Ukraine, nearly a quarter of them from Africa. And as I am writing this, there is increasing information about BIPoC[3] hindered to leave Ukraine or to enter another country, especially Poland. In both these countries, fascist groups have been active for a long time and continue to be very present. Also, people who transported BIPoC to the EU face police persecution due to human trafficking.

It should also be mentioned that about 400.000 Roma who live in Ukraine also face racist discrimination including fascist attacks when trying to cross borders. Furthermore, according to UN figures, about 30.000 of them do not have documents; thus, their chance of being accepted under the conditions of the directive are slim[4].

Finally, it remains to be seen how the mass influx of refugees from Ukraine will affect those from other countries asking for asylum in the EU. Especially in this regard, it is important that the directive is still in force and not the foreseen regulation. If all asylum seekers from countries with less than 75% of positive decisions were subjected to the fast-track procedure, only people from Venezuela, Syria, and Eritrea would have a chance for a proper asylum procedure. But also without these stipulations, more and more asylum claims have been decided negatively after a very superficial assessment of flight reasons even before the war – at least in Austria.

People are dying in the war in Ukraine – people from different nationalities, including from the Russian Federation. People are fleeing to save their lives – people living in the Ukraine and also Russian citizens opposed to the war. These people must be protected – this is enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, irrespectively of their nationality, ethnicity, gender, class etc.

There is no doubt that the decision to activate the Directive on Temporary Protection is an important step here. But there is also no doubt that the limitations of this decision contradict these fundamental principles and are driven more by nationalist and supranationalist concepts and interests than by a truly universal understanding of human rights – including the rights of those who, out of which reason ever, are not residents of the country of which they hold the citizenship. The European Union understands the “four mobilities” including mobility of persons, as one of its most important values and achievements. But when it comes to the protection of refugees and the rights of migrants in the EU, individual mobility leads to exclusion. Third country citizens in the EU lose their right to citizenship in a Member State when they spend some time in another Member State. Afghan refugees who spent their whole life in Iran do not receive protection as they are not persecuted in their country of origin. And now, the Council of the European Union simply ignores the plight of those who decided voluntarily to make Ukraine their new home.

Probably, its limited approach made it possible to implement the directive without protest of right-wing parties. In this vein, the Austrian right-wing party FPOe recently published the slogan: “War refugees, yes, hidden mass migration, no.” And in social media, those usually opposed to any kind of protection for people on the move welcome Ukrainian refugees as they are “white and our European brothers and sisters”.

Maybe one should mention at this point that the full-hearted acceptance of Ukraine as a part of Europe is a rather recent development directly related to the definition of a common enemy. Up to now, it has, e.g., not applied to the many exploited Ukrainian workers in EU agriculture.

And, maybe one should also mention that in the same week that Russian forces entered Ukraine, the US launched airstrikes in Somalia, Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen, and Israel struck Syria and Palestinians in Gaza. We did not hear much about that.

Notes:
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[1] Council Directive 2001/55/EC of 20 July 2001 on minimum standards for giving temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons and on measures promoting a balance of efforts between Member States in receiving such persons and bearing the consequences thereof; https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2001:212:0012:0023:EN:PDF

[2] Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of The Council addressing situations of crisis and force majeure in the field of migration and asylum, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0613&from=EN

[3] Black indigenous people of colour

[4] https://ukraine.un.org/en/106824-about-30000-roma-ukraine-have-no-documents-story-roma-activist