Never has a conflict displaced so many people in such a short time since the Second World War alert this Tuesday, March 15, Unicef. The United Nations children’s agency says that every second a Ukrainian child becomes a refugee. And the worst may be yet to come.
From our correspondent in Geneva, Jeremiah Lance
UNICEF spokesman James Elder spent several days in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, near the Polish border. The hospital is already overwhelmed with the wounded. Among them children.
A few days ago, about sixty arrived from kyiv. Overwhelmed, doctors are now forced to sort patients to be able to save as many as possible: “ Pediatricians use a sticker system. A green sticker on a child means he’s hurt but he can wait. If it’s red, it means it needs immediate attention. And if it’s black, that means it’s alive. But that we shouldn’t devote time to him because he’s going to die no matter what… That’s what Ukrainian doctors have to do when they see injured children in kyiv, Kharkiv or Lviv…“, explained James Elder during a regular press briefing.
Unicef is also concerned about the increasing number of separations of these children from their families and the risks associated with human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Scenes already seen in other conflicts, notably in Syria. Syria, which remains to this day, the most serious displacement crisis in the world. With one detail: if 275,000 Syrians fled their country during the first 18 months of the war, it only took 20 days of conflict in Ukraine to throw nearly 3 million people on the roads of exile.
