Ms Olena Stryzhak:

I thank the Chair for giving me the floor. To be honest, I heard many questions, but I will address the ones that I can answer and that I can respond to. First, I agree with what was said about how now in Ukraine all people are under violence. This is true even for those who can apply to get help. They are also in violence. For example, there are women, girls and people who are HIV positive and who are going abroad as refugees. We can help these women who apply to us from other countries. It is true that they are afraid to go to doctors and medical centres. They are scared that people will discriminate against them. They may not have the power and energy to apply to doctors. When they come from Ukraine, they do not feel so good and are upset. We, therefore, use our consultants who also go abroad or those who can give them support and consultation. It works in different countries. Community organisations that work in your country give you the information about how you can make appointments with doctors, and information on where there are centres and places where people help women first of all. This is because in the main, 90% of refugees are women. They can go there to get help and treatment.

On the issue of sexual violence, I now see cases of families. This is fresh information from last week. Someone applied to me and asked about giving interviews to women or girls who were raped by Russian troops. They said they need interviews so that they can know some information of these cases. No one agreed to even do an interview. We are talking about helping, but this is a hard situation. Girls from families are closed off and do not want to be in touch. It might be the case that this happens the first time, and maybe in the future we can give them support, psychological support and consultation. However, now, this is so fresh. It is so tragic and causes so much trauma.

That is why we are helping. We are responsible for the supply we have for girls and women. When they came into shelters from this region, as I mentioned, from eastern and southern parts to western parts of Ukraine and the centre, they started to talk after some time, and even to get support from our side.

Within the country, we continue to deliver our services and to organise places where women can get medical care or even support for pregnancy, but it is changing. We have an even bigger level of stigma and discrimination in the western part of Ukraine. People are moving from the eastern part, where stigma and discrimination is at a lower level. When they move to the western part, we work with medical staff and personnel to explain to them and to support them. We provide social supports. We go to the medical centres and to the places where they live to deliver medicine and other basic needs. We are dealing with urgent needs, but in future we will have audits. We need to be ready to do them and to prevent cases of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. That is why it is really a big issue, which we continue to resolve, but sometimes we cannot help in time because women are not ready to get help because there are so many trauma cases.