United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said an eight-year-long conflict in Eastern Ukraine had already made three million people to be in need of humanitarian assistance “on both sides of the contact line”. 

Mr Griffiths, who also serves as the humanitarian affairs chief, told journalists on Saturday in New York that the UN and its partners had been responding to that need for many years.

Griffith spoke to journalists on Saturday at the UN headquarters in New York about the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

Speaking on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, he noted that the UN has so far in 2022 “coordinated humanitarian convoys delivered over 150 tonnes of assistance to the most vulnerable people in the non-government controlled areas in the Donbas.”

He said Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, those living close to the contact line and those living in the non-government areas are currently the most in need and “continue to require food, shelter, health care, water and sanitation and protection.” 

“We are concerned about reports of population movement…fleeing in search of safety and protection,” Mr Griffiths said.

He added that hundreds of thousands of people were “on the move in Ukraine and out of Ukraine, as we speak.” 

The UN emergency coordinator said two coordinated emergency appeals would be launched in the coming days in response to Ukraine’s escalating humanitarian needs, “including rising internal displacement, and the needs of people seeking refuge in countries neighbouring Ukraine.”

He explained that donors were needed to mobilise financial resources, which will be outlined in a few days.

The senior UN official reminded that 50 per cent of the wheat used by the World Food Programme (WFP) comes from Ukraine, which illustrates that the effects of the crisis are “spooling out before us, and we have yet to see where it will lead”.

(NAN)