When a 26-year-old woman called the emergency services one night in late May after her alcoholic father became violent with her 9-month-old son, Kyiv police officers rushed to the scene. They quickly concluded that the woman and child were in danger and evacuated them to a safe place, a “crisis room.”
That crisis room — the first in Kyiv — opened two weeks ago in a hidden location to provide temporary refuge in the most urgent cases of domestic violence.
Kyiv police and crisis hotlines saw a surge in the number of calls about domestic violence as families were cooped up at home during a two-month lockdown imposed in March to slow the spread of COVID-19.
But while Ukrainian authorities have now lifted most restrictions, conflicts and abuse in families persist due to job loss, depression, financial issues as the coronavirus takes its toll on Ukraine’s economy.
Jaime Nadal, the representative of the United Nations’ Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ukraine, says awareness campaigns about domestic violence — which has long been considered a private matter and a taboo subject in the country — have also contributed to the growing demand for services for victims. Moreover, the services are improving and have adapted during the pandemic.
Read more: Under quarantine, Ukrainian victims of domestic violence struggle to access help
A week after the first case, the police brought another woman and child to the crisis room, also at night. They had experienced physical violence at the hands of the woman’s husband and had to be taken away immediately. The next day, the woman found an apartment to rent.
On the night of June 7, police took two sisters, 20 and 25 years old, to the crisis room from their home in Kyiv where they lived with their father who beat them. Their mother was away at the time but later joined them. At the moment, all three are receiving psychological and legal counselling.
Until two weeks ago, those women would have had nowhere to go. Now, they can escape to safety, even if temporary.
Victims — women and men with children —may come to the short-term shelter at any time of day or night, without documents or any belongings, and stay for up to 10 days to make up their minds on their next step. Many are brought by the police, who decide it is too dangerous to leave a victim with an abuser.
At the crisis room, they can get an initial medical examination, talk to a psychologist and a lawyer and have some rest in safety and privacy.
Two separate rooms, each with a kitchen and a bathroom, can accommodate a total of six adults and two babies at once. They are furnished, and temporary residents can get essential items and staple foods on site.
“We give the clients three days to recover. After that, we ask them to start collecting documents if they want to move into a shelter,” said Tetyana Zotova, head of the Kyiv city center that works to respond to and prevent gender-based violence and manages shelters.
In Kyiv, a city of over three million people, there are two shelters for women and their children who have suffered from domestic violence. They can accommodate as many as 22 people for three months, and, in some cases, even longer.
But getting into one of those shelters can be a long process.
Victims must be registered residents of Kyiv and have to provide a written application letter, a referral from the police or a social worker, medical certificates and birth certificates for their children.
That’s where temporary crisis rooms come in handy.
They do not require any of those papers from a victim to be admitted and give them the vital time and space to consult with a lawyer and do the paperwork if they want to file for divorce or move to a shelter.
Psychologist Olga Pavlova says it is not uncommon that victims have nowhere to go, especially if they move to Kyiv from another city and have no relatives in Kyiv.
Maryna Khonda, Kyiv’s deputy mayor, says the city needs four such crisis rooms.
She plans to open one on the left bank of the Dnipro River, which has some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods. But she also worries whether the economic recession triggered by the pandemic will allow for it.
Despite generous aid from donors — the United Kingdom, Estonia and Canada — for opening crisis rooms, shelters and support services for victims of gender-based violence in several Ukrainian cities in collaboration with UNFPA, they are managed by the municipal authorities.
Meanwhile, city revenues have shrunk during the quarantine due to fewer taxes and less rent collected, and spending has prioritized healthcare, social welfare and unemployment benefits, Khonda said.
According to European standards, there must be one shelter place for a woman with a child per 10,000 citizens.
Although Ukraine signed the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention — which sets the policies and legal framework for preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence — back in 2011, the Ukrainian parliament has not yet ratified it, despite repeated calls from human rights groups to do so.
A month ago, a petition for its ratification gathered the 25,000 signatures required for it to be reviewed by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The response from Zelensky’s office was bureaucratic and hardly satisfying: The president will submit the convention to the parliament for ratification at the proposal of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
This story was created with support from the Renewable Freedom Foundation.
