皇家华人

Dr Yulia Ioffe (UCL's Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction) used UCL Global Engagement Funds to work with academics in Poland, to research violence committed against Ukrainian women and children.

The war in Ukraine has been ongoing since 2022, and many refugees have made claims about gender-based violence that has happened to civilians. However, there are relatively few people in Western academia with the relevant language skills and regional knowledge to research this. Around 90% of the refugees from Ukraine go to Poland, and the majority are women and children. There are many academics researching these issues in Poland, but their work is mainly being published in Polish, which people in the West are not aware of.

In response to this, Dr Yulia Ioffe successfully applied for UCL Global Engagement Funds. As a Ukrainian international lawyer who works on human rights for women and children 鈥� and with experience of working for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency 鈥� Yulia found herself with a unique skillset that directly applied to this situation.

Bringing together key knowledge

鈥淲hen the full scale invasion on Ukraine started, it became clear to me that there are not many people in Western academia who know the language and have regional knowledge, who can quickly research and inform the public about the issues,鈥� Yulia said. 鈥淧oland is willing to receive the biggest number of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children. And they have all these intellectual resources and a lot of scholarship that we're just not aware of in the West. When I heard about the UCL Global Engagement Funds, I thought it would be an obvious collaboration.鈥�

As a result of the funding, Yulia was able to run a workshop in Warsaw with the Polish Academy of Sciences, attended by experts on international criminal law, and individuals who work on gender, accountability and prosecutions. The workshop also included people from Project Sunflowers, an NGO in Poland that has been collecting witness statements from Ukrainian refugees. 鈥淭his is particularly helpful,鈥� Yulia explained. 鈥淲hen the invasion started, government authorities in Ukraine, Poland and in neighbouring countries were not prepared for such large numbers of people moving. For criminal law purposes, it's really important to collect evidence as soon as possible.鈥�

The purpose of the workshop was to discuss ideas of how they could work together. The funds also enabled Yulia to hire a research assistant, to look into what research had already been done. This helped them identify complementary research that was needed. As a result of the workshop and background research, they identified an interdisciplinary project they wanted to work on, with three distinctive strands.听

The first part of the project will look at international law approaches to gender violence, exploring how international and domestic courts prosecute conflict-related gender-based crimes committed by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. This includes the context of Russia's history of gender-based violence, including during WWII. The second part is about how international and national communities such as NGOs, charities and the Ukrainian diaspora responded to gender-based violence in Ukraine. This also includes an important element about survivors鈥� access to services in Poland. And the third strand is about resilience, including Ukrainian women as self-advocates, how survivors of domestic violence are building their lives in Poland, and changing gender dynamics in Ukraine as a result of war. The team is currently working on a funding application so they can work on this much larger project.

Uncovering gender-based violence against Ukrainians

Yulia said this opportunity to connect with people in Poland has been invaluable. 鈥淚n international law, we always apply the law to the facts,鈥� Yulia said. 鈥淏ut to know the facts, you need to be working with people on the ground. Lived experiences are very important, but sometimes they can also blind you. So I think it鈥檚 also helpful to bring scholars from other countries and experts in a particular area to inform some of the literature on Ukraine.鈥�

Next, Yulia and the team will involve Ukrainian academics and NGOs in their work ahead of the funding application. As well as bringing to light the gender-based violence that has been happening during the war, they also hope to influence changes in policy and litigation as a result of this work. An aspect of this is about laws that are relevant to survivors.听

鈥淥ne of the reasons I wanted to go to Poland specifically was the limitations of abortion rights in the country,鈥� Yulia said. 鈥淢any women were raped by members of the Russian army, and they were unable to access abortion in Poland. They had to either move to another country or illegally obtain the morning after pill. They weren鈥檛 receiving the care they needed. But at the same time, Poland is a member of many international treaties. To me, it sounded quite absurd and unhelpful that we have all these frameworks, but this basic right to access abortion wasn't available. So this project is about Ukraine specifically, but hopefully the outcomes will be helpful for generally litigating gender specific claims.鈥�

As Yulia鈥檚 work continues with her new collaborators, she is encouraging other UCL academics to apply for UCL Global Engagement Funds to get projects off the ground. 鈥淭his is a particularly good funding scheme for early career academics, because we don't necessarily have established connections with other universities in other countries,鈥� she said. 鈥淚n my experience, it鈥檚 these relatively small amounts of funding that are the most helpful, as they create crucial networking opportunities to establish research collaborations.鈥�

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Featured image

• A crowd of people transiting through Lviv stand outside the Lviv train station
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