Women on the Contact Line

Amid suffering and sorrow on the contact line in eastern Ukraine, there are remarkable women who strive daily to make life better. Female community leaders and female monitoring officers from the OSCE SMM build bridges between people, serving the cause of sustainable peace in often unseen but concrete, meaningful ways. Read their stories of resilience and hope here.

All Roads Lead to the Library

For the people of Starohnativka, a village close to the contact line in Donetsk region, there is more than a grain of truth in Albert Einstein’s contention that the only thing one absolutely must know is the location of the library.

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In hard times, community is everything

When she was appointed as head of the village council in Bulavynske, some 48 kilometres north-east of Donetsk, Alla Grigoryevna Kopulova was given a key, a stamp and a warm invite “to get to work.” It was 1984; she was 38 and by then had spent all her working life at the local coalmine, the area’s main employer and economic lifeline.

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Small steps, giant leaps

Friends call her “Dijana Solution” – and the nickname seems apt. Problem solving is one of Dijana Manojlovic’s personality traits, perfected as a Bosnian police officer in her native Sarajevo during the conflict in the 1990s.

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Home is where the heart is

As a Senior Press Assistant with the OSCE SMM in Kyiv, Anna is well used to explaining issues and making sense of information and arguments. But she is unable to answer the one question her son, Aleksey, regularly poses: when are we going home?

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The Face of Conflict

Jennifer Langlais, an SMM monitoring officer based in Donetsk city, is many things. A Harvard and Oxford graduate and a human rights advocate with work experience in places as diverse as Gambia and Nepal to name but two. But speak to her for an hour and one thing is patently obvious: she's both a listener and story teller.

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When the guns fall silent

When the conflict first came to her hometown of Yasynuvata in the summer of 2014, 31-year-old Taisiia thought it would be all over in a few days. More than five years later, she’s still waiting.

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When a Kind Word Makes a Difference

As an acting patrol group leader, Susan Frank takes her responsibilities seriously. With between four and six SMM staff members in her care, she leaves nothing to chance before heading out to the contact line, going through every detail to cover all contingencies, especially those related to the security and wellbeing of her team.

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Lessons in Courage

When Galina, chatting with SMM monitoring officers in a second-hand charity shop in Selidove in Donetsk region, looks back at her life, she has little doubt in her mind that she is exactly where she ought to be.

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Garden of Eden in Stanytsia Luhanska

Almost 70 years old, Yevgeniya, a gynaecologist at Stanytsia Luhanska Hospital, has seen and experienced more than her fair share of the ups and downs of life, especially over the past five years.

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