Ukraine (MNN) — Amnesty International says the Ukrainian military put civilians in danger by setting up bases in schools and residential areas. Ukrainian officials say these positions were necessary to defend civilians against Russian attacks.
The head of the Amnesty arm in Ukraine resigned in protest over the report.
The war has displaced 665,000 Ukrainian students and 25,000 teachers. David Durance with TeachBeyond says, “It’s one of those things that we see literally out of our back window every day. We watch kids who have moved to our neighborhood from Ukraine, and they’re trying to figure out what it means to be in a British school without knowing English.”
“It’s not something I can forget because we think about it, of course, in our mission. But it’s also right in front of us.”
Durance says, unlike many other refugee crises, governments didn’t put Ukrainian refugees into huge camps. Instead, thousands of individual families have sheltered them. “This is a new challenge for an organization like ours. We’re just starting to wrap our arms around what that could be. It’s different from some of the other refugee crises that we’ve worked in.”
Forgotten crises
In the UK, the war in Ukraine remains front-page news. But Durance says two other refugee crises, in Afghanistan And Ethiopia, have largely disappeared from Western media.
Months of civil war have ravaged Ethiopia, especially the northern Tigray region. Amid famine, a blockade has made it difficult to get food or medical supplies into the country.
TeachBeyond serves in countries near Afghanistan as well. Durance says, “That crisis is far from over. And there are opportunities all over the place to serve refugees in Central Asia, this humanity, this image of God that is lost and forgotten, and not being cared for.”
All over the world, TeachBeyond provides education to refugees in Jesus’ name. Join this work here.
The header photo shows Russian military vehicles during the invasion of Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
