A job to help people in a country that now needs it most
Yana Liubimova, a former volunteer and social activist, knows what it feels like to seek shelter in unfamiliar cities because of war. Twice a displaced person herself, she continues to help people, even after she has taken the position of Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament – e.d.) Commissioner for Human Rights.
At the beginning of our interview, Yana recalls the tragic morning of February 24, 2022. “It was a massive flashback - a déja vu of hypertrophic proportions.”
Nine years ago, armed conflict in Donbas forced Yana to leave her home in Kadiyivka, Luhansk region. The 2022 full-scale war caught her in Starobil’sk, where she moved with her family and founded the NGO ‘’Dieva Hromada’’ in 2016. Together with other activists, she helped internally displaced persons settle in a new place and launched several important projects focusing on community engagement through socio-cultural and creative projects, the development of civil society, social protection, and sustainable socio-economic development of the Luhansk region.
“I didn’t sleep at all that night, watching the news and the address by the Russian Federation president as he announced the offensive. As I heard it, I said to my husband 'Pack it up! We should go.' I understood that being in the Luhansk region, we were short of time to leave.”
Into the unknown
“We drove for three days, into the unknown. Passed the city of Dnipro, heading westwards. Those three days and nights felt so long, almost endless. There was neither food and water, nor fuel at gas stations,” recalls Yana.
Driving with her headphones on, Yana kept in touch with colleagues who stayed under shelling and started organising delivery of humanitarian aid. “I was afraid of falling asleep because I felt if I did, someone might have died without the aid. That feeling lingered upon me for a long time until the Luhansk region was almost occupied,” she says.
Promise you will get us home
From a distance of thousand kilometres, Yana organised evacuations of people with reduced mobility. “I perfectly remember my first evacuation. I still keep the list of those people. Most of them were elderly women and those with disabilities. They could barely talk due to the stress. After we had taken them from Rubizhne, which was under the shelling, their first words to me were: “Promise you will get us home”.
Later, answering a question about her dream, after pondering for a while, Yana confessed: “I used to dream every night of walking around in my house. My dream is to return home”.
Winning back ‘European Ukrainian-ness’
Well ahead of the full-scale invasion, Yana Liubimova had joined the Coalition 1325 Women. Peace. Security. The coalition is a network of civil society organizations, local authorities, and private entities aiming to increase the role of women in promoting change, restoring peace, and preventing conflict at the regional level in Ukraine.
“As an expert, I was a member of the Luhansk Coalition. Later, I was invited to join the ICAN network supported by the OSCE WIN project. When we had already felt we were on the brink of war, we decided, as part of the network activities, to contact communities and find out whether they had evacuation plans and how they were going to respond. In other words, as a women’s movement, we were planning our activities for what was about to happen”.
Yana believes that Ukraine’s experience in implementation of the National Action Plan for the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security at the local level amidst the ongoing war will help other states to develop effective plans. She strongly believes that the women of Ukraine have to be involved in the global expert society. Along with her colleagues, Yana will continue the endeavour to relieve the burden of migration and internal displacement on women. The path has already been laid through involvement of women in peacebuilding and decision-making. “We are winning back our European Ukrainian-ness (Ukrainian identity – e.d.) where there’s no place for discrimination,” she summarises.
This story is part of a series, prepared by the OSCE’s WIN for Women and Men. This is a project aimed at strengthening comprehensive security through innovating and networking for gender equality to showcase women leadership responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Women leaders are the inspiration and the reason behind the WIN Project, which strengthens OSCE-supported networks and gives rise to new networks, fostering women’s participation and leadership, as well as broader men’s engagement in achieving gender equality.