Ongoing war in Ukraine turns 1.7 million people into refugees

Most 16-year-olds spend their summers working behind a counter, hanging out with their friends andmaybe sneaking out to a party or two. Maria Semenenko got to spend hers fleeing her hometown.

Semenenko, now 18, is from Donetsk, the still-burning hot spot of the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels. Theconflict has claimed nearly 9,400 lives since 2014, according totheUN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Despite the fact that there's a nominal ceasefire in place, military and civilian casualties continue to mountin eastern Ukraine, theUN High Commissioner for Human Rightssays.

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International monitors such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europecontinue to observe one ceasefire violation after another, and continue to be denied access by Russian-backed rebels to a number of parts of the territory they control, including the border with Russia.

The war, along with Russia's annexation of Crimea, has forced more than 1.7 million people like Semenenko from their homes to other parts of Ukraine.

Many have gone to fairly close cities in the east like Kharkiv and Zaporizhia. Smaller numbers have gone to cities like Lviv in western Ukraine, more than 1,100 kilometres away, while others have gone to smaller cities and towns all over the country where they have friends and family.

But many, like Semenenko and her family, left everything behind and settled in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital and largest city of almost threemillion.

It wasn't easy at first.

"I like singing," she says at Kyiv's World Refugee Day celebration on June 20. She used to sing and play a bit ofguitar with her friends back home in Donetsk.

"But when I got to Kyiv, I didn't know what to do," she says. "I didn't know a lot of people here."

But last winter Semenenko found out about a talent show an NGO was putting on for young internallydisplaced persons (IDPs) like her. She applied, auditioned and was accepted.

It gave her achance to not only belt out a few tunes, but also to make friends in a crowded new city.

"I've had some good luck," she says.But she knows not everyone isas lucky.

Few jobs for refugees

Semenenko's parents have found work in Ukraine's competitive capital city. But according to arecent survey by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) mission in Ukraine, fewer than half of suchfamilies in Ukraine even have regular income from employment.

The general level of well-being of mostIDPs(internally displaced persons)is quite low.- ManfredProfazi,International Organization for Migration

Even those who docan't manage to pullin very much. According to the IOM's survey, 59 per centof internal refugeesmade less than $68 Cdnperfamily member per month.

"The general level of well-being of most IDPs is quite low," says Manfred Profazi, IOM Ukraine's chief of mission.

Someassistance is available from the Ukrainian government: $20 Cdna month if a refugee isable to work and $46 Cdnif not. But refugeeactivists worrythat newUkrainian government rules and "monitoring commissions" will take these benefits away from the mostvulnerable refugees like the elderly and disabled.

"For people who live in poverty, on the very brink of survival, these small subsidies mean a lot," activistAndriy Timoshenko told the Kyiv Post last week.

"They don't have anywhere to live or anything to live on."

From Syria to Ukraine

Assad Hawlkat might have a place to live, but it's not where he wants to be.

A Kurd from Kobani in northern Syria, Hawlkat left home several years ago to study at a university inLuhansk ineastern Ukraine. Heearned an undergraduate degree, got married and was working towardsa graduate degree when Russian-backed rebels seized Luhansk.

"In 2015 they started saying they might have to send all the international students out because of thesituation there," he says. He ended up going back home to Kobani, itself recently liberated after a longsiege by ISIS.

Hawlkat, a fervent painter, didn't last long back home. Extremists threatened him after a small exhibitionof his paintings earned their ireand soon after he came back to Ukraine to pursue his graduate studies inKyiv.

Nothing to goback to

After his parents told him there was nothing to come back to in Kobani, Hawlkat applied for refugeestatus in Ukraine. He is still waiting.

But he can't go back to Luhansk, where he'd rather be. His wife is there but can't leave because she'slooking after her ill mother and grandmother. As a refugee claimant, he isn't allowed to get throughthe front lines to visit.

"I have all the photos to prove my story but they say no," he says, frustrated.

But for Hawlkat, art is his outlet. He displayedsome of his paintingsat the WorldRefugee Day celebration.

Value peace, all that you have. Because just one time, you can lose it all.- MariaSemenenko,18, IDP fromDonetsk

His paintings are visual odes to what he's lost and what he hopes to get back. Some of his pieces arebased on photographs, including of his own war-torn hometown in Syria.

Others are abstract pieces, frommulticoloured swirls of oil to flowery yet fiery electrocardiograms that express emotions he can't put intowords.

"As an artist, I'm burning from the inside for my paintings," he says. "I can't live without them."

As MariaSemenenko sheltersherselffrom the afternoon sun, she is askedwhat she wouldsay to Canadians about herself and her life.

She pauses, seeking the right words in English.

"Value peace, all that you have," she says. "Because just one time, you can lose it all."

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