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By CIVICUS
May 1 2025 (IPS)

CIVICUS speaks with Ukrainian gender rights activist Maryna Rudenko about the gendered impacts of the war in Ukraine and the importance of including women in peacebuilding efforts.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has profoundly impacted on women and girls. Many have been displaced and are struggling with poverty and unemployment. Those who’ve stayed endure daily missile attacks, damaged infrastructure, lack of basic services and sexual violence from Russian forces if they live in occupied territories. Women activists, caregivers and journalists are particularly vulnerable. The international community must increase support to ensure justice for victims and women’s inclusion in peace efforts.

Maryna Rudenko

What have been the impacts of the war in Ukraine, particularly on women and girls?

The war began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, with Indigenous women, particularly Crimean Tatars, immediately and severely affected. They risked losing their property and livelihoods, and to continue working they were forced to change their citizenship. Pro-Ukraine activists had to flee and those who stayed faced arrest. This placed a heavier burden on many women who were left in charge of their families.

At the same time in 2014, Russia began supporting separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, leading to the occupation of territories such as Donetsk and Luhansk and the displacement of over a million people. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, many lost their homes again. Nearly seven million fled to European countries. This population loss poses a significant demographic challenge to Ukraine’s post-war development.

Since 2015, conflict-related sexual violence has been a major issue. Around 342 cases have been documented. The International Criminal Court recognised that conflict-related sexual violence has been committed in the temporarily occupied territories since 2014.

Ukraine also experienced the largest campaign of child abduction in recent history: Russia took close to 20,000 Ukrainian children from occupied territories and sent then to ‘camps’ in Crimea or Russia, where the authorities changed their names and nationalities and gave them to Russian families. Ukrainian children were forced to change their national identity. This is evidence of genocidal approach in Russia’s war activities.

The war has also devastated infrastructure and the economy. In my town, 30 km from Kyiv, the heating station was hit by 11 ballistic missiles, leaving us without electricity or water for a long time. It was very scary to stay at the apartment with my daughter and know that Russian ballistic missiles were flying over our house. Roughly 40 per cent of the economy was destroyed in 2022 alone, causing job losses at a time when the government spends over half its budget on the military. Civilians, including a record 70,000 women, have taken up arms.

Beyond the immediate human cost, the war is causing serious environmental damage, with weapons and missile debris polluting soil and water beyond national borders. Russia’s occupation of Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, poses a very real risk of a nuclear disaster for Ukraine and Europe as a whole.

How have Ukrainian women’s organisations responded?

Starting in 2014, we focused on advocacy, championing United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1,325, which reaffirms the role of women in conflict prevention and resolution. The government adopted its National Action Plan on the implementation of the resolution in 2016. We formed local coalitions to implement this agenda, leading to reforms such as opening military roles to women, establishing policies to prevent sexual harassment, integrating gender equality in the training curriculum and gender mainstreaming as part of police reform.

Following the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian women’s civil society organisations (CSOs) shifted to providing immediate humanitarian relief, as survival became the top priority. Women’s CSOs began helping people, particularly those with disabilities, relocate to western Ukraine and providing direct aid to those who remained. As schools, hospitals and shelters for survivors of domestic violence were destroyed, women’s CSOs tried to fill the gap, providing food, hygiene packages and cash and improvising school lessons in metro tunnels.

People stood up and helped. In Kharkiv, which is located 30 km from the boarder with Russia, the local government created underground schools. It’s unbelievable that this happened in the 21st century and because of the aggression of a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Our children, women and men can’t sleep normally because every night there are missile and drone attacks.

In the second half of 2022, women’s CSOs and the government tried to refocus on long-term development. One of the first initiatives was to amend the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security to better address conflict-related sexual violence in both occupied and liberated areas. This was a much-needed response given the many reported cases of killing, rape and torture. This involved training law enforcement officers, prosecutors and other officials on how to document these crimes and properly communicate with survivors, who often blame themselves due to stigma surrounding the violence.

We have also reported Russia’s violations of the Geneva Conventions, particularly those concerning women, to UN human rights bodies.

Women’s groups are pushing for more donor support for psychological services to address trauma and helping plan for long-term recovery, aiming to rebuild damaged infrastructure and improve services to meet the needs of excluded groups. Some donors, like the Ukrainian Women’s Fund, have agreed to support the costs of mental recovery for women activists to help them restore their strength and support others.

How should women’s voices be integrated into recovery and peacebuilding efforts?

Women must have a real seat at the negotiation table. Genuine participation means not just counting the number of women involved but ensuring their voices are heard and their needs addressed. Unfortunately, the gender impacts of the war remain a secondary concern.

We have outlined at least 10 key areas where the gender impacts of the war should be discussed and prioritised in negotiations. However, it looks like these are being largely ignored in the current high-level negotiations between Russia and the USA. We heard that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted the importance of returning Ukrainian children when he met with Donald Trump. It’s highly important for the mothers and fathers of these children and for all Ukrainians.

Women’s CSOs are working to ensure all survivors can access justice and fair reparations, and that nobody forgets and excuses the war crimes committed. We urgently need accountability; peace cannot be achieved at the expense of truth. This is particularly important because the Council of Europe’s Register of Damage for Ukraine only accepts testimonies of war crimes that happened after the 2022 invasion, leaving out many survivors from crimes committed since 2014. We are working to amend this rule.

The international response should follow the principle of ‘nothing about us, without us’. International partners should collaborate directly with women-led CSOs, using trauma-informed approaches. For women affected by combat, loss or abduction, recovery must start with psychological support, and civil society can play a vital role in this process.

The effective implementation of Resolution 1,325 also requires reconstruction funds that incorporate a gender perspective throughout. Ukrainian women’s CSOs prepared a statement to highlight the importance of analysing the war’s impact on the implementation of the UN’s Beijing Platform for Action on gender equality and we used this as common message during the recent meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Additionally, we believe it’s time to consider the successes and failures in implementation of Resolution 1,325 and its sister resolutions, because it’s 25 years since its adoption and the world is not safer.

We appreciate any platforms where we can speak about the experience of Ukraine and call for action to support Ukraine to help make a just and sustain peace in Europe and the world.

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SEE ALSO
Ukraine: ‘Civil society remains resilient and responsive, but financial constraints now hamper its efforts’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Mykhailo Savva 25.Feb.2025
Russia: Further tightening of restrictions on ‘undesirable’ organisations CIVICUS Monitor 30.Jul.2024
Russia and Ukraine: a tale of two civil societies CIVICUS Lens 24.Feb.2024

 

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