Emergency response to conflict in eastern Ukraine

_{UNICEF supports health, nutrition, HIV prevention, education, safe drinking water, sanitation and protection for children and families caught in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. We call on all sides to recommit to the ceasefire.}

_{The challenge}

After more than six years of conflict in eastern Ukraine, 3.4 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance – 60 per cent of them are women and children. Approximately 1.6 million people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded.

The situation is particularly grave for nearly 430,000 girls and boys living in areas with the fiercest fighting: Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – within 20 kilometres of the ‘contact line’ – a line that divides government- from non-government-controlled areas. 

_{The solution}

Children in eastern Ukraine need lasting peace.

While the fighting continues, we provide support to children and their families affected by the conflict. Operating through four offices on both sides of the conflict, UNICEF:

- provides life-saving mine risk education to hundreds of thousands of children and their caregivers;

- supports the rehabilitation of schools damaged by the fighting; and

- provides more than 2.3 million people with access to safe water.