Ukraine update - OCHA, ICRC, WHO, OHCHR, IOM

UN humanitarians on Tuesday described their efforts to reach people in Ukraine, detailing difficulties such as lack of safe and reliable access, depleted stocks and rising numbers of civilian victims. The spokesperson of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, stressed the need to “have clarity” on the humanitarian routes.” “It needs to be a route which is safe. You need to have timing for movements. You need to have contact numbers for those running the convoys in and out. You need to know the purpose of each movement. And you need to have a hotline in case it doesn't work,” he said. Laerke informed that OCHA has a team in place since Monday in Moscow to liaise with the authorities, including with the Minister of Defence, to bring the system of deconfliction forward. They met for the first time yesterday and they're meeting again on tuesday. Ewan Watson, a spokesperson for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), described the situation as “really apocalyptic”, adding that “it is getting worse.” “We've depleted our stocks, as I said; it stands to reason that people are coming to the end of whatever supplies they had. So, when you ask if this is a matter of life or death, or if it's, is it lifesaving? Yes. For us, it is essential that humanitarian aid gets into a city like Mariupol and to other cities that are in the midst of conflict in Ukraine today,” Watson said. Speaking via Zoom, Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), described talking to a doctor in Lviv, who was in contact with colleagues in eastern parts of the country. According to that doctor, her colleagues “were saying that it's very difficult for patients to access health care facilities in these areas, not only because of security, but also because of damaged infrastructure.” The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also provided an update. So far, the Office has recorded at least 1,207 civilian casualties since the latest armed conflict began on 24 of February, including 406 people killed and 801 injured. However, the actual figures are likely to be much higher. “Most of the civilian casualties are from airstrikes and explosive weapons used by Russian forces with wide area effects, including heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems,” Elizabeth Throssell, a spokesperson for OHCHR) said via Zoom. As a result, Throssell explained, hundreds of residential buildings in many cities, including Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mariupol and Kyiv have been damaged and destroyed. The spokesperson said that scenes of destruction in Mariupol and other cities are “raising huge concerns with regards to what is happening to the civilians” and appear to imply that “the principles of distinction and proportionality are clearly not being met.” A spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Paul Dillon, informed that more than two million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring states as a result of the ongoing war. Among them are 103,000 third-country nationals from dozens of countries.