Ukraine: Top UN aid official appeals for access across contact line

STORYLINE

“Winter is coming,… [and]  all we want to do [is] provide insulin to the hospitals, provide blankets, provide mattresses… it's not complicated,” the United Nations’ top aid official in Ukraine said on Friday. 

Speaking from Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, where shelling has intensified in the last week, Denise Brown issued an urgent appeal for guarantees from Russia and affiliated forces to allow humanitarians to deliver “absolutely necessary” relief items across the contact line.

The Resident Coordinator for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)  is currently on a three-day mission to eastern and central Ukraine (Kryivyi Rih, Kharkiv and Dnipro) to assess the humanitarian situation first-hand. 

She told reporters in Geneva that the UN was “constantly negotiating” for access, “up and down” the line that divides those fighting the war in the south and east. Mrs. Brown also said that she had no way of confirming what relief items, “if anything” Russia had reportedly sent to non-Government-controlled areas. Aid organizations “just have no reliable way of crossing the frontline”. But she said that she was “hopeful that the Russian Federation will provide the security guarantees that we require to go across”. 

So far they have “reached less than a million people in the non-government controlled areas” and she warned, “if farmers can't reach their land, that's going to have a huge impact on their economic situation.”

The UN aid coordinator also warned that winter is fast approaching in Ukraine and that she did not believe that vulnerable communities in the east and south had what they needed to survive.

Six months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, nearly 18 million people, around 40 per cent of the country’s entire population, need humanitarian aid.  Many elderly people were living in damaged houses and the lack of access to gas or electricity in large parts of the east “could be a matter of life or death” if people could not heat their homes, Mrs. Brown said in a statement.

Regarding OCHA’s plans for winter, Mrs. Brown explained, “we will have to work differently …we can only assume” that people caught in a war “do not have what is necessary to make it through,” the season, “which starts early and lasts long”.

In a positive note, the Humanitarian Coordinator pointed out that the war has not prevented the humanitarian community from delivering: “Since the start of the war, we've reached over 12 million people,” providing “cash transfers, health care, shelter… access to clean water, protection, rehabilitation”.

Agricultural production is also “now finally moving” due to the UN-brokered Black Sea initiative. This “will have an impact on families, on farmers and their communities and on the food insecure, particularly in the Horn of Africa right now,” she added. 

Having met people uprooted by the war, Mrs. Brown said “moral and hope was still there”. While internally displaced people told her they are grateful for support from the UN and NGOs, they “still want to go home”.  

ENDS

STORY: Ukraine Humanitarian Impact OCHA
TRT: 02:39”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 26 August 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

SHOTLIST

1. Exterior wide shot, United Nations flag flying.
2. Wide shot, panel at briefing.
3. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“The winter is coming. These people have been caught in a war. Do they have what is necessary to make it through the winter months? I don't have anyone telling me that they do. So I can only assume that they don't. So every week or every two weeks, we're issuing notifications trying to access these populations.”
4. Close of journalist writing.
5. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“We have to help people wherever they are and I'm hopeful that the Russian Federation will provide the security guarantees that we require to go across. That's all we want to do. Provide insulin to the hospitals, provide blankets, provide mattresses, fuel if we can, repair windows and doors. It's not complicated.”
6. Mid side view of attendees, screen showing briefing in background.
7. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“The war has not prevented the humanitarian community from delivering. Since the start of the war, we've reached over 12 million people, which is a tremendous achievement. That's in cash transfers, that's in health, that's in shelter, that's access to clean water, protection, rehabilitation. So the team on the ground is really working extremely hard.”
8.Mid shot of attendees at briefing.
9. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“In that time we have reached less than a million people in the non-government controlled areas. We just have no reliable way of crossing the frontline.”
10. Close shot of panellist, speaker on screen in background.
11. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“People in this country have suffered enormously, enormous loss of lives, enormous loss of livelihood. The agricultural production, which, thanks to the Black Sea initiative, is now finally moving, will have an impact on families, on farmers and their communities and on the food insecure, particularly in the Horn of Africa right now.”
12. Mid shot of attendees at briefing.
13. Soundbite: (ENGLISH) Denise Brown, OCHA Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine:
“You just have to see as you drive across this country, it's an agricultural country. There's production everywhere. So we can only imagine that if farmers can't reach their land, that's going to have a huge impact on their economic situation.”
14. Mid shot of screen with speaker and panellist, camera in foreground.
15. Mid shot of attendees at briefing.
16. Close shot of reporter typing.