Ms Ghita El Khyari:

I thank the members. I have identified questions about the health needs, conflict-based sexual violence and sexual and gender-based violence, and the fact we are funding smaller organisations. I would also like to touch on conflict resolution. I want to start by saying with a lot of humanity that I personally do not have an answer to all of the great questions the members have raised. I will allow Ms Stryzhak and Ms Flanagan to respond to the some of the issues. I will deal in particular with the health issue and the issue of sexual and gender-based violence. If there is anything else the members wish to address, they can jump in after that.

I will start with sexual and gender-based violence, and conflict-based sexual violence more specifically. When we announced the call for proposals for the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund, it was centred around a few areas of work. The first was humanitarian response and the second was the issue of protection in regard to sexual and gender-based violence, conflict-related sexual violence and psychological support. The third area of work that we have been initiating and asking organisations to apply for is longer term social and economic recovery and political participation of women and girls. We have seen pretty much an equal interest in all of these areas. However, I want to flag that the issue of sexual and gender-based violence in all of these dimensions – because it has multiple dimensions in war in general and in Ukraine in particular - has been at the heart of the response of all of the partners that have applied for funding under our emergency support.

When it comes to violence against women and girls and sexual and gender-based violence, in the beginning, the issue of conflict relating to sexual violence and sexual violence abuse as a weapon of war, as mentioned by a couple of members, was not intentionally captured. As we started the implementation, we have increasingly seen this issue coming up. As members all know, this takes a long time to capture, because the stigma is doubled. Not only has the victim been a survivor sexual violence, but this been done by the opponents or enemy forces. We have seen, as members have pointed out, more and more women and girls coming out to talk about this. Yet, the phenomenon is still very much underestimated and under-documented. We need much more work on this. A few partner organisations have increasingly started investing in that issue. Other organisations have indicated that they want to contribute to the documentation of this phenomenon. This will be increasingly addressed in the future. Now, when we talk about conflict-related sexual violence, as well as the services that are provided for survivors, this has to be within the framework of larger, wider services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in general, including within those that are not conflict-related and to which women and girls who are forcibly displaced are exposed. This is because displacement increases the threat. With that comes an aggravation of sexual violence, conflict-related sexual violence and violence used as a weapon of war. This is something that we have seen across all our partners. It is an increasing issue, and it is being addressed.

I have mentioned the online platform that one of our partners has started. Through this platform, it has started to document more and more of this. I also wanted to add that this is the case for organisations in Ukraine, as well as for organisations that we support in the neighbouring country of Moldova, which has been providing services for the incoming refugees from Ukraine, have expressed the same needs and issues around implementation.

I will let Ms Stryzhak speak about the health issues. She has expertise in that area, and I do not have anything else to add to that. I will comment very quickly on the decision-making part. For us, at the UN Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund, we support and focus on local women’s organisations not only because we think it is fair, because they deserve the money and because women need to be supported, but also because those organisations have the outreach. They know the communities, they know their constituencies, they know where the needs are and they have the capacity to quickly react to and intervene in emergency settings. This is something we have seen in this particular crisis. The board of the fund approved the response in March. We already have 14 partners and they have been doing a lot of great work on the ground. That is because of their unique positioning in knowing the needs and having access to the communities. That also goes with a lack of implication in and involvement in decision-making. That is the case in the humanitarian response in general. We, therefore, also need to see women as decision makers in the humanitarian response and not only as the beneficiaries of the humanitarian response. That shift needs to be made. More globally, if and when there is any kind of political process in terms of conflict resolution made at community level or at the more national and formal level, there will be a need at any point to be able to support women’s participation in those processes. Whatever they are, and this is not to pre-empt any kind of political solution to this, wherever the discussions are, women need to be at the table. This is also something that the fund is very much involved in.

There was also a question on the funding. The capitalisation level of the fund overall, and this figure is beyond Ukraine and Moldova, is now at $100 million. That figure is since we started in 2015. For the response in Ukraine right now, with the support of the donors, of which Ireland is one, and Canada and Germany are the others, we have reached around $10 million that we are still in the process of distributing to local women’s organisations. I will hand over to Ms Stryzhak for her insights.