The human toll of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine is critical, with 4.4 million people affected by the crisis, of whom 3.4 million require humanitarian assistance and protection. The shelling of urban areas and civilian infrastructure means that 60 percent of the people living along the 457-kilometre ‘contact line’ are affected by shelling regularly, and almost 40 percent are affected every day. There is just under a million individual crossings of the ‘contact line’ each month, which is rapidly becoming one of the most mine-contaminated stretches of land in the world. Food insecurity has doubled since 2016, with 1.2 million people food insecure, and there are escalating cases of multi-drug resistant TB, HIV and even polio. HIV prevalence among pregnant women in conflict-affected oblasts is significantly higher than the national average.
Today, the dire humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine is protracted and complex, whilst the response is severely underfunded and largely forgotten by the international community.