The invasion of Ukraine has caused immense human suffering. Until November 20th, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 16,784 civilian casualties in the country. In the same month, UNHCR announced that the number of displaced people as a result of the invasion arrived at 14 million. Other several million have experienced trauma, burnout syndrome or different kinds of violence, directly or indirectly connected to the armed violence, and are now dependent on humanitarian aid.
The results of the event of February 24th, however, have been overarching. In a report dated from June 2022 on the “Global impact of the war in Ukraine: Billions of people face the greatest cost-of-living crisis in a generation”, the UN reports that as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, “94 countries, home to around 1.6 billion people, are severely exposed to at least one dimension of the crisis and unable to cope with it. Out of the 1.6 billion, 1.2 billion or three quarters live in ‘perfect-storm’ countries, meaning countries that are severely exposed and vulnerable to all three dimensions of finance, food, and energy, simultaneously”.
In Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, youth have been in the frontlines: as volunteers in the humanitarian response, working to organize aid and support towards Ukraine when in diaspora, and in the army. Likewise, in many areas of the world, youth are and have been in the forefront of humanitarian responses, protests for democratization, human rights and social justice.
With this background in mind, “The Global Impacts of the Invasion of Ukraine: Insights from the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda” will be a global webinar bringing together speakers from different areas of the world to discuss the different impacts of the invasion of Ukraine in diverse contexts, with an additional focus on the impacts on youth populations and recommendations connected to the YPS agenda. It aims to disseminate accurate information from those working on the ground and create a space to foster solidarity between Ukrainian youth and youth prevenient from countries that have been particularly vulnerable to the crises heightened by the escalation of armed violence in Ukraine.
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This Webinar is part of Peace Support Ukraine (PSU), a 6-month first phase project that aims to lay foundations for long-term nonviolence and peacebuilding work in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus in support of local and national partners. It is supported by the Soka Gakkai Buddhist Institute in Italy implemented in partnership with PATRIR (Romania), Un Ponte Per (Italy), Nonviolence International Ukraine (Ukraine), the Institute for Peace and Common Ground Ukraine (IPCG) (Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Leadership Academy (ULA).
PSU aims to support local and national organizations and authorities in Ukraine and to ensure EU and international organizations and partners increase support for peacebuilding, trauma recovery and nonviolence in Ukraine, and direct nonviolent resistance and opposition to the war in Russia and Belarus. Peace Support Ukraine supports Ukrainian experts, CSOs, activists and youth to address priorities they identify, have their voices heard internationally and to create opportunities for Ukrainian citizens to build hope for their future and positive change in their everyday lives during and after the war.