Global Refugee Fund

There are an estimated 300 Ukrainians living in the border village of Tudora, Moldova. Few of the locals know much about who they are or what they do, but slowly the Ukrainians are getting more used to their temporary home. For Iulia Krohmali though, it is more than a place of refuge. Iulia, her husband, and their 15-year-old son were living in Odessa Oblast up until the fighting started. Just two days after it began, on the 26th of February, they crossed into Moldova. There were so many people at the border, that it took them three attempts before they could successfully cross.

“I recall these people… walking on the road to the Moldovan border, along with their animals and children. It was a horrifying experience. We were very lucky to have a car – but even with a means of transport it was impossible the first two times.”

They heard the explosions when the city of Odessa was bombed on the night of the 24th of February, just a day after her son’s birthday. The explosions could be heard as far as Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, 200 km north. Iulia and her husband didn’t think for too long before they started packing the most important things around the house and were ready to go. The only problem was her dogs – she has big dogs and could not take them with her.

“We had to make a tough choice and left our dogs back home. There’s a neighbor that takes care of them and sometimes we go back to visit.”

Iulia’s husband was able to cross the border because he has dual citizenship of Moldova and Ukraine, but most men between 18 and 60 cannot leave the country because they are expected to be called up for army duty. The Ukrainian authorities recently passed a law that would severely punish the men that crossed illegally via bribes or otherwise.

“His parents are from Tudora so we were lucky we had a place to go to and he could come with us. It’s a small house and we don’t have much, but it’s safe and we’re surrounded by family.”

Before the war, Iulia was a street merchant, selling fruits and vegetables on the beach in the sea village of Ilichevsk, a popular destination for Moldovan tourists. When home she would home-school her son, who is disabled and requires an expensive and extensive physical therapy program.

“Every day we travel 40km to a private hospital in Stefan Voda where our son receives treatment for his legs. Unfortunately, they can only offer us free treatment for one month and our income has been severely affected by the war. I don’t know what we’re going to do once this month ends. The laser treatment he needs costs $2000 and only private clinics can provide it – that’s money that is way beyond what we can afford.”

She was excited to hear that the Moldovan authorities are looking to find and hire anyone from Ukraine who can help with school needs for displaced children, and since Iulia has experience teaching with her son, if a laptop and internet were provided, she would gladly do that during the day.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m the best teacher in the district, but if you give me a schoolbook, a laptop and internet I can definitely enroll in the program to help Ukrainian children that are in Moldova and want to study.”

When the war ends, she will return to her home and help rebuild the Oblast (district). “It doesn’t matter what they leave behind, it is our home, and we are not going to give up on it. We’re very set on going back to provide all the help needed to restore our home country.”

In response to the Ukraine crisis, IsraAID is supporting refugees in Moldova and operating a logistics hub in Romania that transports relief supplies into Ukraine. IsraAID is committed to a long-term response in the region. Support IsraAID’s emergency response today.

Alex is IsraAID’s Media and Communications Consultant in our Ukraine emergency response mission.

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Starting my role at IsraAID in the middle of Israel’s first lockdown provided me with a unique experience as an IsraAID staff member, most notably, the lack of international travel. In another time, my first year at IsraAID would have involved at least a couple of visits to our humanitarian missions, except it was 12 months until my first emergency response mission, and another six until I’d meet any of the refugee communities that we work with.

I had built a picture in my head of what a refugee camp looks like. It’s probably similar to the images most people have, of tent cities, of limited access to water and hygiene facilities, and of families and communities that have lived there for years, perhaps even decades. This is what the media likes to tell us, because it captures our attention, but also, because it’s often the truth.

Earlier this month I traveled to Albania to meet some of the 167 Afghan refugees that IsraAID helped evacuate. We ate meals together, shared stories of our families and our education, and I was shown around the “resort” in which they are staying. No matter how different the term “holiday resort” may sound from “refugee camp”, that’s exactly what it is. An off-season Albanian holiday resort on the Adriatic coast currently housing refugees. Staying there are hundreds of people who escaped Afghanistan. That’s hundreds of people living in small apartments, with sufficient access to toilets, showers, and safe drinking water, and likely in Albania for just a few months as their visa requests for a more permanent settlement elsewhere are processed.

So what really is a refugee camp? And who are the refugees living there? There is a plethora of reasons people become refugees, and an infinite number of stories of what people sacrificed when fleeing their country. J* was a parliamentary aid to a prominent family, G* was a female police officer in a district where it is rare to find female leaders, and R* was a male journalist who ran a women’s news network. What did these people have in common before the Taliban entered Kabul back in August? Possibly not much at all. But after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they became part of a newly forged community, created by the necessity to leave Afghanistan and find temporary shelter in Albania, secretly and safely.

Similarly, their lives before the evacuation may have been worlds apart from any of the other refugees that IsraAID works with in Colombia, Germany or Kenya, but what connects people together under the same umbrella of ‘refugee’ is one of the toughest decisions a person has to make. Leaving their homes and communities for fear of their lives. Some found safety in a neighboring country and some on the other side of the world; some living in decades-old tent cities and others in off-season holiday resorts.

Call it a refugee camp or settlement, or even a resort, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the services that these people are receiving. Across the world, IsraAID is working with refugees and internally displaced persons to provide some of the many essential services required in established refugee communities, one of which is psychosocial support. In Albania, as in many of our other countries, we have established safe spaces for children, women and men to deal with their trauma, of the initial challenges in their home communities or those they are facing now as they establish new lives. This is not a top-down approach. This is listening to the community’s needs and letting them tell us what they need, most often employing specialists from the community itself, like Leke, a child protection specialist from Afghanistan.

In some sense, no matter from where people flee and to where they settle, be it temporarily or permanently, they can all be described as a refugee, but that’s a complete over-simplification. They have names, professions, and families, and they have their own experiences. Most importantly, they all have their own story which is far from over.